Arab Disintegration and the Right to Development

Abstract

Every line of the covenants on the right to development invariably spells out equity as a necessity (UN, 1976). The delivery of life’s basic needs is not an option that only wealthy states can provide because they can afford to do so. Under the provisions of the right to development, all those nations that ratified the agreement, that is, nearly all the world, should contribute to ensuring the safety of person and basic subsistence in every country, no matter how poor. This is a far cry from the way things are done. The logic of capital accumulation necessitates the making of misery before the making of profit. This can be reduced and argued on two interrelated planes for the sake of illustration: the first is the cost-cutting measure by which unions are broken up or Third World nations are bombed to cheapen wages or grab raw materials; the second is a sociological relationship in which the exercise of power, often by means of violence, buttresses imperial rents and financial grab. In the AW, imperial booty is carried out by the use of force and the debilitation of the state, which may potentially serve as a platform for Arab working classes to enhance their negotiating position in the global integration process.