The Rights-Based Approach to Development in the UN Programming

The international human rights system faces a lot of challenges with regard to the realization of the international human rights norms. It failed to achieve the main objectives of the international conventions. This failure is produced from various aspects: first some specific characteristics of the rights themselves as they lack clear standards, besides the unavailability of an international mechanism for enforcement. This calls for a new strategy to approach the implementation of human rights standards internationally. At the same time, the international development efforts that concentrate basically on achieving economic and financial progress of states and ignore the social and human dimensions of the economic strategies, were accused as the actor in the deterioration of the poor standard of human life. While both human rights activists and development practitioners are searching for a solution, they meet at a central point which is: "Human rights and human development are two sides of the same coin."