implications for social and economic development are profound. Concern
for justice protects the task of defining progress from the temptation to
sacrifice the well-being of the generality of humankind--and even of the
planet itself--to the advantages which technological breakthroughs can make
available to privileged minorities. In design and planning, it ensures
that limited resources are not diverted to the pursuit of projects
extraneous to a community's essential social or economic priorities. Above
all, only development programs that are perceived as meeting their needs
and as being just and equitable in objective can hope to engage the
commitment of the masses of humanity, upon whom implementation depends.
The relevant human qualities such as honesty, a willingness to work, and a
spirit of cooperation are successfully harnessed to the accomplishment of
enormously demanding collective goals when every member of society--indeed
every component group within society--can trust that they are protected by
standards and assured of benefits that apply equally to all.

At the heart of the discussion of a strategy of social and economic
development, therefore, lies the issue of human rights. The shaping of
such a strategy calls for the promotion of human rights to be freed from
the grip of the false dichotomies that have for so long held it hostage.
Concern that each human being should enjoy the freedom of thought and
action conducive to his or her personal growth does not justify devotion
to the cult of individualism that so deeply corrupts many areas of
contemporary life. Nor does concern to ensure the welfare of society as a
whole require a deification of the state as the supposed source of
humanity's well-being. Far otherwise: the history of the present century
shows all too clearly that such ideologies and the partisan agendas to
which they give rise have been themselves the principal enemies of the
interests they purport to serve. Only in a consultative framework made
possible by the consciousness of the organic unity of humankind can all
aspects of the concern for human rights find legitimate and creative
expression.

Today, the agency on whom has devolved the task of creating this framework
and of liberating the promotion of human rights from those who would
exploit it is the system of international institutions born out of the
tragedies of two ruinous world wars and the experience of worldwide
economic breakdown. Sig