Global Development and Human Rights: The Sustainable Development Goals and Beyond

Review

“This book provides a lucid, accessible, and trenchant analysis of the potential and limits of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Paul Nelson moves deliberately and seamlessly between high-level theoretical frameworks and the grassroots reality of people and organizations at the heart of the struggle to implement economic rights. This deeply nuanced explanation of what has (and has not) worked in relation to the SDGs succeeds in making us care about development: the dilemmas of distribution, inequality, participation, and accountability central to this assessment are central to our shared futures. This book is vital to understanding how development paradigms have changed over time and to making our way forward collectively amidst the uncertainty facing us all.” -- Shareen Hertel, Professor of Political Science and Human Rights, University of Connecticut, and Editor, The Journal of Human Rights

“Global Development and Human Rights is by far the best and most comprehensive work so far on the vital question of how the Sustainable Development Goals connect to human rights standards. It provides both an explanation of the theoretical issues involved and many practical examples of development agencies building on this connection. It also considers the impact of COVID-19 on progress toward the SDGs. It moves forward understanding of the rights-based approach to development, and will be equally interesting to academics and to practitioners in the development sphere.” -- Joel E. Oestreich, Professor of Politics, Drexel University, and author of Development and Human Rights: Rhetoric and Reality in India

Product Description

From 2000 to 2015 the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) mobilized external aid to finance life-changing services in the global South. However, in doing so, the organization failed to meet the challenges often associated with human rights initiatives, which are to make underprivileged communities independently prosperous, equitable, and sustainable.
In Global Development and Human Rights, Paul Nelson assesses the current thirty-year effort to make transformative changes in the global South by exploring how this disconnect from human rights weakened the MDGs reputation as a successful aid organization. To overcome the failings of the MDGs, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were formed in 2016 with the intention of managing the issues fundamentally ignored by the MDGs.
Drawing on twenty-five years of research on development goals, human rights, and the organizations that promote them, Nelson reasons that transformative change arises out of national and local movements, and shows how human rights can offer leverage and political support that help drive transformative national initiatives.

About the Author

Paul Nelson is an associate professor of International Development at the University of Pittsburgh.