A/HRC/50/60 the same time accruing staggering profits to “developed” countries, their transnational corporations and a small group of elites in “underdeveloped” countries. 30. Convincing evidence shows that the development framework is ill-equipped to disrupt racial inequality within and among States. Instead, global economic and financial systems remain engines of racially discriminatory underdevelopment and the mainstream international development framework remains ill-suited to challenging this status quo.55 If anything, the development framework has contributed significantly to entrenching and advancing racialized underdevelopment. For example, in 1999, the Independent Expert on the effects of foreign debt characterized the preceding 50 years of economic development programmes as a disaster for human rights in the Third World. He noted that the economic and social crisis in indebted countries at that time could not be understood “in isolation from export-led growth development strategies consistently encouraged by the Bretton Woods institutions, bilateral donors and commercial institutions since the early 1950s”. 56 A vast body of research has demonstrated that the international economic and financial order and the economic programmes implemented by the Bretton Woods institutions and their backers have perpetuated economic harm, inequality and the dismantling of social safety nets in the global South57 and the dependency of formerly colonized peoples. 58 31. That said, it would be incorrect to insist that the development framework has not progressed in some ways from its colonial antecedents. For decades, development narrowly referred to large-scale political, economic and financial intervention in “underdeveloped” nations with limited consideration of social and human costs.59 Since then, Member States, at least in principle, have adopted newer, “human-centred” approaches to development, such as “human-rights based development” and “sustainable development” and these approaches define development in part as the expansion of human rights, freedoms and “capabilities”.60 32. Another shift is the rise of “emerging economies” – namely, the “BRICS” group of States (Brazil, the Russian Federation, India, China and South Africa) – as prominent actors in the international development framework. China, in particular, is a notably powerful player in international development aid. China has recently committed to a reframing of its foreign aid programme toward “helping other developing countries to pursue the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”, with emphasis placed on South-South development cooperation.61 33. There is extensive controversy over whether the development activities and newfound influence of the emerging economies represent a fundamentally different and more equitable approach to the traditional international development framework. While recognizing the powerful potential of development programmes led by the global South, the Special Rapporteur on the right to development has warned that “there is a danger that South-South 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 See Sundhya Pahuja, Decolonising International Law: Development, Economic Growth and the Politics of Universality, and Antony Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law. E/CN.4/1999/50, para. 14. See A/72/187; Joseph Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents (New York, W. Norton & Company, 2003); Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (London, Penguin, 2008); Joseph Stiglitz, “Is there a post-Washington Consensus Consensus?”, in Narcias Serra and Joseph Stiglitz, eds., The Washington Consensus Reconsidered: Towards a New Global Governance (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008); Richard Peet, Unholy Trinity: The IMF, World Bank and WTO, 2nd ed. (London, Zed Books, 2009); Bessma Momani and Mark R. Hibben, What’s Wrong with the IMF and How to Fix It (Cambridge, United Kingdom, Polity, 2017); Andrea Shalal, “Global finance system partly to blame for inequality – World Bank’s Malpass”, Reuters, 6 December 2021; and Jason Hickel and others, “Imperialist appropriation in the world economy: Drain from the global South through unequal exchange, 1990–2015”, in Global Environmental Change, vol. 73 (March 2022). See Patrick Bond, “The political economy of Africa and dependency theory”, in Ushehwedu Kufakurinani and others, eds., Dialogues on Development Volume I: Dependency, (New York, Institute for New Economic Thinking, 2017). A/HRC/17/25, para. 3. Ibid., paras. 3–8, and A/HRC/10/5, para. 27. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Brief on White Paper on China’s International Development Cooperation in the New Era (2021), p. 2. 9