Liberia's Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal Affairs has called for urgent reforms to strengthen the institutional framework supporting the Right to Development, a principle first proclaimed by the United Nations in 1986 and reaffirmed in subsequent global agreements.
According to a dispatch from Beijing, People's Republic of China, Cllr. Jeddi Mowbray Armah addressing the 2026 Forum on Global Human Rights Governance emphasized that while the Right to Development has gained normative recognition over the past four decades, its practical implementation remains uneven, particularly for post-conflict and developing countries.
"Development, in our experience, has not been a straightforward or unconstrained process," Cllr. Mowbray Armah noted, reflecting on Liberia's post-conflict reconstruction since 2003. He highlighted both the transformative impact of international debt relief and the constraints imposed by conditional policy frameworks, stressing the tension between developmental autonomy and externally driven governance models.
The Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal Affairs highlighted Liberia's experiences during the 2014 global commodity downturn and the Ebola crisis as evidence of the vulnerabilities faced by low-income economies. Against this backdrop, he welcomed the growing role of South-South cooperation, particularly China's contributions, in expanding development partnerships grounded in mutual respect, national ownership, and policy autonomy.
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"The Global Development Initiative reflects many of the principles that animate the Right to Development," he stated, while cautioning that broader structural challenges in global financial governance, trade regimes, and sovereign debt arrangements must still be addressed.
To advance the unfinished project of making the Right to Development a lived reality, Cllr. Armah offered five key propositions: (1) Establish stronger institutional frameworks with monitoring and accountability mechanisms; (2) Integrate human rights and development considerations into global financial governance; (3) Develop more transparent and inclusive approaches to sovereign debt restructuring; (4) Reform trade and investment regimes to expand policy space and technology access; and (5) Elevate the experiences of post-conflict and developing countries in shaping global norms.
"The challenge before us is to ensure that development is realised not as a selectively available opportunity, but as a universal entitlement supported by an international system capable of making that aspiration achievable in practice," Cllr. Armah concluded.
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The two-day Forum, under the theme: "Joint Development, Shared Human Rights: The 40th Anniversary of the Adoption of the Declaration of the Rights to Development and a New Vision for Global Human Rights Governance," brought together over 400 distinguished participants and experts from nearly 100 countries, the United Nations and other international and regional organizations to deliberate on the evolving role of the Right to Development in global governance. Liberia's intervention highlighted both the opportunities and challenges facing post-conflict states in navigating contemporary development pathways.
