Rio+20 (15/06/2012) – Jan Egeland from Human Rights Watch calls for donor countries and institutions to look behind the figures to progress on the ground and demand accountability of countries who are ignoring human rights.
While he says the progress over the last 20 years should be celebrated – in terms of poverty eliminations, education, hunger and expectation of life – but that people must be more critical of the countries that show no respect for human rights and discriminated against minorities.
With worsening climate change, he says people need to be more careful that sustainable development does not alienate indigenous communities and infrastructure and developments in agriculture do not drive these communities off the land where they have lived for possibly decades.