The right to development is one of the human rights. This right was recognized in the United Nations in 1986, in Resolution 41/128 under the title Declaration on the Right to Development. According to this resolution, the right to development means that every human has the right to participate in and benefit from economic, social, cultural, and political development. The right to development expands the abilities and choices of the individual and, in other words, develops the freedom of the individual. However, before, it was thought that the right to further development was a challenge for less privileged countries. Today, in countries with a good history in human rights, we see that the right to development has been jeopardized by increasing social inequalities. Therefore, the right to development is not reserved for the less privileged countries, and it is the problem of all countries. Therefore, the special rapporteur of the United Nations believes that we need urgent measures to better realize the right to development. In this regard, measures such as the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda (to end poverty in all its forms) and the Paris Agreement on climate change (to reduce greenhouse gases and protect the environment, etc.) have been carried out at the international level.
It should be noted that the concept of right to development is a complex concept that has several interpretations and has different dimensions[1]. For example, some developing countries have interpreted this right as meaning that they have the right to receive assistance from developed countries to achieve an acceptable level of development. Naturally, such an interpretation is not acceptable from the point of view of developed countries. On the other hand, some consider this right to be both individual and social, and they include political participation, environmental protection, efforts to establish peace, and even international cooperation among countries to improve the living conditions of future generations[2]. There is no doubt that this ambiguity and various interpretations reduce the accuracy and importance of this concept to the extent that it can be claimed that the right to development is generally nothing but the right to have a good life in all its dimensions.
However, Clause 1 of Article 1 of the Declaration defines development as follows: the right to development is an inalienable human right by which every human person and all peoples are entitled to participate in, contribute to, and enjoy economic, social, cultural, and political development, in which all human rights and fundamental freedoms can be fully realized[3]. Therefore, it can be concluded that the right to development has a strong economic dimension in the sense that the increase in economic prosperity provides the basis for the realization of the right to development. Still, it should be noted that mere economic development is not equal to the realization of the right to development; but justice in the distribution of wealth, attention to preserving the environment, freedom of individual choice, etc., are all among its components.
According to the mentioned points, it is not possible to describe the current situation of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the field of the right to development except with a data-oriented and historical review of the economic, social, political, etc. trends of the last few decades. Undoubtedly, the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1978 was a turning point in the contemporary history of Iran. After the constitutional revolution and the nationalization movement of the oil industry with the Islamic revolution, the Iranian people tried to realize the ideals that were summed up in the slogans Independence, Freedom, and the Islamic Republic. In fact, the Iranian people tried to create a new model by redefining the goals and ideals of their society and realizing a new and different model of development. Certainly, statistics are one of the best benchmarks to measure the success of this forty-something-year-old approach.
We said that the right to development has a deep connection with economic development in the sense that the right to development becomes possible when people live in a society that is economically developed to an acceptable level. Iran is a country whose population in the last seven decades has increased from about 19 million people in 1956 and reached about 80 million people in 2016[4]; this explains the difficulty of development in a country with such a population and size.
One of the most important ideals of the Islamic Revolution of the Iranian people has been the expansion of social justice and the development of equal opportunities. The Gini coefficient (index) is used to determine the proper distribution of wealth in a society and measure the level of inequality in the distribution of income or wealth. According to statistics from the World Bank, Iran’s Gini coefficient has increased from 47.4 in 1986 to 37.4 in 2013. Compared to other countries, this number shows that the class gap in Iran is decreasing (although at a slow pace), while in most other countries, this distance is increasing[5]. On the other hand, we can mention the statistics of the poverty line; according to the statistics of the World Bank, from 1986 to 2018, the population below the poverty line in Iran decreased from 44.2% to about 14%. Still, in recent years, the poverty line has increased.
To evaluate the level of economic and infrastructure development of the country, the state of education, health, and human development can also be mentioned. The Islamic Republic of Iran is the tenth country in the world in terms of the amount of the education budget as a percentage of the total government budget and ranks first in the world in terms of the growth of literacy[6]. The growth of literacy can be considered as one of the basic foundations of the right to development. On the other hand, Iran can be considered a powerful and developed country in terms of infrastructure facilities. According to statistics, 96% of people have access to safe drinking water, and 100% of people have access to electricity. It should be noted that these figures have a significant distance from the global average[7].
In the field of health, Iran is one of the countries that has recognized health as a right of the members of the society and has set aside a significant budget for it so that all members of the society enjoy minimum health and treatment. The result of these actions is that life expectancy has increased from 55 to 76 years in the last four decades (10th in the world)[8]. Also, according to the statistics of the World Bank, the death rate of children under the age of five in Iran has decreased from 120 feet per 1000 people in 1971 to 15 feet per 1000 people in 2019[9].
The Human Development Index (HDI) shows the level of health, education, and income of people in different societies, which the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) publishes every year in a report called Human Development Report (HDR). The amount of HDI in countries with very high human development is more than 0.8, and in countries with high human development is between 0.7 and 0.8, and in countries with medium human development is between 0.55 and 0.7, and in countries with low human development is less than 0.55. In the 2018 report, Iran ranked first in the countries with high human development with a score of 0.798, and it had a very small gap with the groups with very high human development. According to these statistics, Iran has improved its ranking by 60 places in the world in the last 40 years[10].
However, it should be noted that all these statistics and explanations should be understood in terms of a very important factor, and that is nothing but sanctions. Iranian people faced one of the heaviest sets of sanctions in recent decades. These sanctions have been among the most comprehensive sanctions. This important point explains how, in the last few decades, the growth and development of Iran as a whole, and the process of realizing the right to development consequently, has been slow and faced with many obstacles. Probably, if there were no such sanctions, Iran’s development process would have continued at a faster pace.
[1] For more information, you can see these two articles.
https://jplsq.ut.ac.ir/article_73993.html(In Persian)
https://jlap.srbiau.ac.ir/article_7226.html(In Persian)
[2] https://iran.un.org/sites/default/files/2020-12/FAQ-RightToDevelopment.pdf
[3] https://int-law.ir/uploads/b16c2b913300465eb1a083eff3c99dbc.pdf (In Persian)
[4] Statistical Center of Iran
[5] Forty-year rise, Seyyed Mohammad Hossein RajI, Seyyed Mohammad Reza Khatami, Maaref publication, pp. 74-82 (In Persian)
[6] Iran 20, pp. 21 and 23 (In Persian)
[7] Forty-year rise, pp. 121-123 (In Persian)
[8] Iran 20, p. 26 (In Persian)
[9] Forty-year rise, pp. 1218 (In Persian)
[10] Ibid, pp. 125-127 (In Persian)