wr2014_web_0

WORLD REPORT 2014Panel of Eminent Persons on the post-2015 Development Agenda and the UN secretarygeneral’s report on the same topic in June 2013.But many governments remain hostile. With the process now at the stage of intergovernmentalnegotiations, we can anticipate serious efforts to marginalize therole of rights or chip away at progress that has been made. Some will no doubtcontinue to invoke the tired old argument that poor people care mainly aboutmaterial improvements and that wider human rights entitlements, like freedom ofspeech and association or access to justice, are not necessary to secure these.But this position has been thoroughly discredited, not least by ordinary peoples’own actions and expressed preferences. Across the globe, people are striving notonly for economic improvement, but also for an end to indignity and injustice, fortheir voices to be heard, and for the opportunity to shape their future.As UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon stated in July 2013, “Upholding humanrights and freeing people from fear and want are inseparable.” A post-2015 developmentagenda that embraces this essential truth will help promote developmentthat is more inclusive and just, and advances basic rights and freedoms forallSome of the most powerful and sophisticated actors on the world stage arecompanies, not governments. In 2011 alone, oil and gas behemoth ExxonMobilgenerated revenues of US$467 billion—the size of Norway’s entire economy.Walmart, the world’s third-largest employer with more than 2 million workers, hasa workforce that trails only the militaries of the United States and China in size.David Mepham is UK director at Human Rights Watch.40