UN General Assembly
1993

of the Commission on Sustainable Development. It is interesting to note that the harm being done to the environment in the southern hemisphere comes more from the effort to survive than from the unbridled desire to consume at all costs. The relationship established between development and environment also establishes the relationship between respect for human rights and development. One of the great truths brought out and accepted at the World Conference on Human Rights, held in Vienna, is that there is a right to development. We cannot talk about human rights if elementary human rights - the most elementary human rights - are compromised by economic, financial and trade policies and strategies to which some people fall victim. To commit oneself to human rights nowadays is to commit oneself to changing the world everywhere and to accepting in every individual the person that we want to be and to defend. It is humankind as a whole that we must defend, or nothing; any other approach means giving in to harmful and questionable divisions between people.