In order for development activities to become entitlements, these activities must be acknowledged by authorities in power and in control of resource allocation as rights to which the authorities in question are accountable One point of view advanced by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and lately also by the World Bank is that development cooperation enables economic and social rights to be realized. The implicit argument is thus that development assistance preconditions rights, but does not overlap with them. However, this argument is artificial since overlapping functions are precisely characteristic of implementation prob- lems concerning, for example, the economic and social rights and the development agenda. The real problem is a political one: to accept that particular activities that we now call development assistance are really part of a rights agenda and that particular authorities are responsible for their implementation and fulfillment.