Professor Celine Tan from Warwick Law School has been appointed as Co-Chair of the Academic Circle on the Right to Development. The Academic Circle, comprising of scholars from different disciplines across the world, will support the mandate of the current United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on the Right to Development, Professor Surya Deva. Professor Tan convenes this Academic Circle with Professor Daniel Bradlow from the Centre for Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria, South Africa.

The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Development contributes to the realisation of the right to development by developing practical guidance to implement the right and to integrate it within development policies and programmes at local, national, regional and international levels. The Special Rapporteur also promotes the integration of the right to development in the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development and climate change negotiations. The mandate is part of the Special Procedures of the UN Human Rights Council, a system which comprises of independent human rights experts with mandates to report and advise on human rights from a thematic or country-specific perspective.

The Academic Circle will offer support to the Special Rapporteur in several ways, including providing advice and suggestions to the Special Rapporteur on issues (including thematic priorities) related to his mandate; disseminating and promoting the implementation of key recommendations made by the Special Rapporteur and conducting research relevant to the mandate identified by the Special Rapporteur.

The right to development is a fundamental right of every human being to participate in, contribute to, and enjoy economic, social, cultural and political development. It is also a collective right that also includes right of peoples to self-determination and sovereignty over natural wealth and resources.

Professor Tan comments:

‘I am honoured to serve as Co-Chair of the Academic Circle on the Right to Development with Professor Bradlow. The global community is a pivotal moment for the realisation of the right to development. A series of international commitments, the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda and the Paris Agreement, have reasserted this right to development and its intersections with other arenas of global concern, including climate change, health and pandemics and disaster prevention.

I am pleased we have convened an expert group of scholars from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, including law, economics and sociology, from different regions across the globe, to support the UN Special Rapporteur, Professor Deva’s efforts to progress the realisation of the right to development’.