Justiciability of the Human Right to Development: Depolarizing the Polemics of Power and Resistance for Post-Pandemic Recovery in Nigeria

The Human Rights Council in January 2020 published a proposed draft Convention on the legal status of the right to development as a human right.  However, since 1972 when the Senegalese jurist Keba M’baye, advanced it, and since 1986 when the United Nations adopted a Declaration on it, the right to development has remained a troubled concept, engaging stakeholders in an extensive debate. The contention is on whether a legal right to development actually exits to a large extent, bothers on the justiciability of such right. This paper articulates the philosophical perspective to the right to development considering it as possessing the defining characteristics of human right concept and determining the extent of its justiciability. It is argued here that, owing to the juristic understanding of the right to development, the polemics of power and resistance surrounding it has persisted, thereby tending to depict the right as non-justisable.  This paper also argues that such polemics could be resolved by understanding the notion of particularization of human right concept.  Since particularization of human right is inevitable both at the international and national levels, it makes no sense understanding any human right as a jus cogens, an understanding that dissolves citizens’ belief in proper justiciality of the right to development under local jurisdictions. Understanding particularization of Human right concept, this paper maintains, will not only enhance its justiciability, but render it amenable for post-pandemic recovery as both nationally and internationally, people would be motivated to initiate development drives. In addition, such understanding will sustain citizens’ confidence in state laws and minimize the rate of agitations, militancy and insurgencies witnessed in most developing countries of the world.  This paper recommends  A reforming the juristic understanding of the right to development to reflect the fact of particularization of human right concept such that it could be justiciable even in local jurisdictions, is advocated by this paper.