The International Dimension of the Right to Development: Where is the Gapping Crack of Accountability for Non-State Actors

Authors

Maxwel Miyawa

Keywords

The Right to Development'; 'Non-State Actors'; 'State Actors'

Document Type

Article

English Abstract

Mainstream legal scholarship has paid much attention to clarifying the meaning of the right to development by placing a great deal of scrutiny primarily on obligations of states to the neglect of non-state actors, as if states are the only integral players in the global economy necessary for realizing the right to development. This entrepreneurship steered clear of assessing viability of the right’s founding vision of redressing institutional imbalances and unfairness of the global economic order. If the discourse took a global order reform trajectory, it would have injected thoughts on how accountability of international economic institutions and transnational corporations can be formulated in a way that bridges the disjuncture between human rights and economic globalization. This article argues that contemporary accountability practices underpinned by the state responsibility doctrine are ill-conceived and inadequate because they overplay the role of the state. Yet, the state is subordinated to the vested interests of unaccountable global capital which seed the global economy with numerous incidences of rights violations. Thus, the article recommends an expanded notion of accountability (answerability, responsibility, sanctions) detached from a state-centric conception of accountability, and which bears the potential of resolving the non-state actor accountability deficit in international law.