GoJIL Vol. 2, No. 3 (2010)
The Millennium Development Goals and Human Rights at 2010 – An Account of the Millennium Summit Outcome
Marie von Engelhardt
Abstract
In September 2010, the heads of State and government of over 140 countries gathered at the United Nations Millennium Summit in New York, to review progress made towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Adopted in 2000, the 8 concrete and time-bound MDGs that have become the shared development agenda of the international community are reminiscent of economic and social rights, but contain no explicit reference to human rights. With five years to go to the MDGs target date of 2015, the Millennium Summit adopted the Outcome Document “Keeping the Promise”, that serves here as a test case to assess the current state of the debate over human rights and development. Although human rights rhetoric has increasingly entered into the development discourse, its influence on development practice remains limited, and human rights come second on an agenda increasingly dominated by the aid effectiveness concept and its vocabulary.
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