Human Rights Day is observed all over the world on 10th December. A celebration that commemorates the date on which the United Nations General Assembly approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.

To join in this celebration, we spoke with Virgínia Brás Gomes, a member of the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and an expert working with the International and Ibero-American Foundation for Administration and Public Policies (FIIAPP) in a project in Morocco to strengthen human rights in the country. Her work dealt specifically with the right to work and just and favourable working conditions.

We spoke with her about the relationship between the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and development cooperation. To fight for these rights, the population and the institutions, states and organisations work to develop both public policies and cooperation projects.

According to Virginia, “the Committee as such has no direct relationship with development cooperation”.

Nonetheless, the covenant on economic, social and cultural rights signed on 16th December 1966, in Virginia’s words, “speaks clearly about the international technical and financial cooperation that the most developed countries have the obligation to provide to support the least developed countries. Therefore, for the committee it is important to reaffirm this obligation of the developed nations to human rights. It is in the dialogues for monitoring the covenant that the committee reaffirms this obligation. We all know that without development, human rights do not exist”.

Virginia asserts that “human rights, particularly economic, social and cultural rights, absolutely require development in relation to economic and financial resources and the stability of the country. This is very important. We always talk about the cooperation of the most developed countries; we also say and recommend to countries that if the national resources are insufficient, it is possible to work through international cooperation, which is not cooperation as a handout but rather necessary cooperation”.

Listen to our special segment on Human Rights Day on our programme Public Cooperation in the World on Radio 5, of Spanish National Radio (RNE).

Los derechos humanos y la cooperación internacional

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