WSSD
Ensuring Human Rights as a Foundation of Development at the WSSD
At the inter-governmental World Summit for Social Development, Copenhagen, March 1995, we prompted the first global commitment to protecting human rights as a foundation for development and to building the supportive and enabling environments required for social development.The WSSD was one of a series of high-level global conferences organised by the UN throughout the 1990s to develop global consensus on action to address critical issues. Rights and Humanity participated in the Summit’s Preparatory Committee meetings and the conference itself as a delegate on behalf of the World Health Organisation’s Health In Development Task Force on which our President served.
We prompted and jointly drafted with governments a new Commitment 1 which sets out the basis of the human rights approach to development we had been advocating. We were able to develop a global consensus and the text was adopted by Heads of State and Government at the Summit, to be included in the Copenhagen Declaration and Programme of Action. We also encouraged stronger language to recognise the importance of health to social development.
In preparation of the WSSD, Rights and Humanity had jointly organized with International Workers Aid a pan-European Round Table entitled “Equity and Social Justice for All”, in Brussels, Belgium, 10-11 February, 1995, During the Summit we held a number of meetings both at the Inter-governmental Conference and at the parallel NGO conference to promote adoption of the human rights approach to development.
Follow Up of the Commitments Made at the WSSD
After the Summit we prepared detailed proposals and strategies for the European Parliament and European Commission to implement the aims of the Copenhagen Declaration and Programme of Action. Our purpose was to focus on social integration in the European Union, through promoting equity, social justice and non-discrimination, ensuring that the concept of social integration was based on diversity.
Rights and Humanity kept the commitments made at the World Summit at the forefront of international development debates. At the suggestion of the British Government, Rights and Humanity was invited to address a meeting of the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD in Paris in 1996, where we once again advocated adoption of the human rights approach to development.