A/HRC/50/60 and plunder”. 41 After its introduction, the “right to development” was widely used to advocate for economic justice and human rights in both collective and individual terms.42 26. The Declaration on Social Progress and Development, adopted by the General Assembly in 1969, mandated the elimination of all forms of inequality, exploitation of peoples and individuals, colonialism and racism, including Nazism and apartheid, and all other policies and ideologies opposed to the purposes and principles of the United Nations. 43 The Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States, affirming State sovereignty over economic, political, social and cultural systems, was adopted by the General Assembly in 1974.44 27. These demands for economic justice culminated in the adoption of the Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order by the General Assembly in 1974,45 in which it was recognized that political independence through decolonization had not translated to economic independence because the post-war economic order had continued the exploitation of the global South.46 In 2016, the Assembly once again “reaffirmed that national development efforts need to be supported by an enabling international economic environment, including coherent and mutually supporting world trade, monetary and financial systems and strengthened and enhanced global economic governance, as well as by respect for each country’s policy space”.47 28. Despite the new vision of development and economic equality offered by newly decolonized nations, “none of the major new international economic order initiatives were realized”.48 The eventual adoption of the Declaration on the Right to Development in 1986,49 which resuscitated several of the decolonial and anti-racist commitments of the Declaration on the Establishment of the New International Economic Order, did little to abate the failure of the movement. The ultimate result, as noted by one expert, was that the Bretton Woods institutions essentially universalized the mandate system, 50 at least insofar as they institutionalized a system wherein “developed” countries, the successors of colonial States, sit at the top of the economic hierarchy and intervene on their own terms in the economic, political and social systems of “underdeveloped” nations and indigenous peoples.51 B. Role of the development framework in underdevelopment 29. In the Durban Declaration, the international community reiterated that persisting colonial legacies of racial and ethnic inequality are manifested in economic and social conditions. 52 The Durban Declaration also recognized that racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance remain causes of underdevelopment. 53 The Special Rapporteur has identified, for example, how the global extractivism economy perpetuates the inequalities of the colonial era and relies upon models of extraction that produce systemic human rights abuses.54 This economy reproduces conditions of underdevelopment, while at 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 8 James Thuo Gathii, “Africa and the radical origins of the Right to Development”, Third World Approaches to International Law Review, vol. 1 (2020), p. 29. Ibid. General Assembly resolution 2542(XXIV), article 2 (a). General Assembly resolution 3281(XXIX). General Assembly resolution 3201(S-VI). Mohammed Bedjaoui, Towards a New International Economic Order (New York, Holmes & Meier Publishers Inc, 1979), p. 12. General Assembly resolution 71/236, para. 5. Antony Anghie, “Legal aspects of the New International Economic Order”, Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, vol. 6, Issue No. 1 (March 2015), p. 433. General Assembly resolution 41/128. Antony Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law (Cambridge, United Kingdom, Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 192. Sundhya Pahuja, Decolonising International Law: Development, Economic Growth and the Politics of Universality (Cambridge, United Kingdom, Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 3. See Durban Declaration (A/CONF.189/12 and A/CONF.189/12/Corr.1, chap. I), para. 14. Ibid., para. 19. A/HRC/41/54, para. 5.