Under the human rights-based approach, the process of development is secured firmly in a system of rights and reciprocal duties under international law, including civil, cultural, economic, political, social right and the right to development. The human right-based approach stands in need of human rights principles (universality, indivisibility, equality and non-discriminations, participation, accountability) to steer the UN development cooperation in the capacity building of duty-bearers to meet their responsibilities and that of right-holders to assert their rights. The UN agencies have concurred on a common understanding on several essential features of the human rights-based approach to development cooperation: • All programmes, policies and technical assistance for development cooperation should help in the realisation of human rights as laid down in the UDHR and other international human rights instruments. • Human rights standards derived from the UDHR and other international human rights instruments direct development cooperation and planning at every stage of the development process. • Development cooperation contributes to the development of the capacities of duty-bearers to meet their duties and of right-holders to assert their rights.30 The right to development is a human right of every individual and all peoples to economic, social, cultural and political development. It has both internal and external dimensions. The internal dimension is manifested in the state obligation to draw up national development policies towards the accomplishment of human rights. The external dimension includes responsibilities of all states to cooperate in the realisation of the right to development. From the viewpoint of determining norms, the internal dimension of the right to development is a component of the international human rights law. While human rights treaty law generally applies ratione loci and ratione personae to the territory of the state party as the sole duty-holder, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has outlined extra-territorial obligations of international assistance and cooperation. The external dimension of the right to development lies in a common obligation for achieving the right among a number of duty-holders, including non-state actors and in the additional specific detail about the collectiveaspects of the right.31 When the right to development is taken as a process for progressive realisation of all rights, some rights could be achieved earlier than the others without violation of any right. Progress would then be judged by the gradual change in the achievement The right to development (encompassing both the human right to development as well as development as human right) was also endorsed by the 1993 Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, which gave attention to democracy, development and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms as mutually reinforcing. ST/HR/2/Rev. 2, Supra note 6. 31 Stephen P. Marks & Beate Rudolf et al., ‘The Role of International Law’ in UN Human Rights Office of High Commissioner, Supra note 16, at 459-460. 30 10 Journal of the National Human Rights Commission, Vol. 22, 2023