II. TWO TENDENCIES IN THE 1990S
It is appropriate to think of human rights and development research as
connected because of two predominant tendencies of the 1990s. The first
tendency is that the demands of developing countries for social provisions
increasingly won support as internationally accepted norms or entitlements.
This is reflected in the UN Social Summit Meeting in Copenhagen in 1995
(with its focus on common principles for social initiatives, e.g., the 20–20
principle), in the fight against poverty and for people’s participation, and in
the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in 1993. In the latter’s final declaration, both the principle of the indivisibility of human rights and
the right to development were accepted unanimously. The conference thus
gave the right to development international legitimacy and at the same time
emphasized once more that social and economic rights have the same
status as civil and political rights. In other words, during the 1990’s,
development was increasingly perceived as a right, whereas earlier it had
been perceived as an instrument of solidarity.
The second tendency that strengthens the closer connection between
human rights and development efforts is the increasing weight placed on
good governance and democratization in the development discourse after
the conclusion of the cold war. The central point in this connection is not
necessarily democracy as a form of government, which in some cases can
be an unwarranted export from the West, but democratization as a political
culture or behavioral norm in which individuals’ and groups’ rights and
possibilities to be heard are protected and established as a norm in the
political process.
This second tendency enjoys significantly greater consensus globally. It
is in this area that a narrow connection exists between efforts toward good
governance and democratization and the civil and political rights with their
weight on rights of free expression, association, and assembly. However,
good governance relates also to economic, social, and cultural rights
because these rights with their emphasis on—for example—living standards,
health, and education can be seen as prerequisites for people’s
participation. Thus, human rights have gained strength during recent years
as they connect to the global political order of democratization emerging
from the cold war; they provide a central code of values for this order.