BAKU, Azerbaijan, March 1. Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov has delivered an opening video speech on behalf of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) at a high-level event dedicated to the 35th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration on the Right to Development, held in Geneva as part of the segment of the 52nd session of the UN Human Rights Council, Trend reports citing the Foreign Ministry.
The event was initiated by the NAM Chair Azerbaijan, in accordance with Resolution 49/8 adopted at the 49th session of the Human Rights Council, and organized by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) jointly with Azerbaijan.
In his speech, Bayramov, on behalf of NAM, thanked the OHCHR for its cooperation in organizing the event.
He emphasized that the declaration marking its 35th anniversary defines "development" as a human right, and said that, despite the unanimous recognition of the right to development as an own human right also by the Vienna Declaration and Program of Action adopted in 1993, there were attempts to misinterpret the concept of this right and divisive international discourse.
The minister further said that the high economic and social costs of the uneven distribution of COVID-19 vaccines around the world and the resulting different situations in different states during the recovery phase after the pandemic further delay development prospects and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.
Besides, he noted that the weakening of the role of multilateral institutions, the slowdown in recovery processes after the pandemic, and the negative impacts of climate change make it all the more necessary to have a good-faith dialogue on existing inequalities.
The minister added that in this regard, NAM member countries attach great importance to this event, recalling, referring to paragraph 10 of the declaration, that the international community has a joint responsibility for the realization of the right to development.
On behalf of NAM, UN agencies and international financial institutions were recommended to include the issue of the right to development in their activities. In this regard, the responsibility of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, in accordance with its mandate, for promoting the right to development within the vast UN system was also noted.
Other speakers of the high-level event were UN Deputy Secretary-General, Chair of the UN Sustainable Development Group Amina Mohammed, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk, UN Development Program Administrator Achim Steiner, Secretary-General of UN Conference on Trade and Development Rebeca Grynspan and World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
The event continued with speeches of high-ranking representatives of states.
The Declaration on the Right to Development was adopted on December 4, 1986, in accordance with the UN General Assembly resolution 41/128.