Abstract
The principle of common but differentiated responsibility (CBDR) has been based on the international community’s recognition of historical responsibilities and the principles of fairness and solidarity. It has been argued that the newly fashionable notion of universality overturns the principle. On the contrary, universality and common responsibility would be impossible in practice without responsibilities being differentiated because of disparities in capabilities, including those that are historically rooted, among human communities.
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Notes
UN programme (or regular) budget for its core operations is a mandatory obligation of all members states (article 17, para 2). It is based on the principle of capacity to pay (linked to gross national income and per capita income adjustments. The UN Charter gives the responsibility for administrative and budgetary matters, including the determination of the scale of assessment per country to the UNGA Fifth Committee. ‘The poorest countries in the world pay only a contribution of 0.001% to the UN, whereas the richest country in the world has a maximum contribution of 22% GNI (the US contribution)’ (Maddens et al. 2014).
Some commentators argue that the need for difference treatment between states was laid in the Constitution of the ILO. The original ILO Constitution was included in the Treaty of Versailles (1919) as Part XIII of the treaty. The treaty of Versailles, under the auspices of the League of Nations, 1919 (June 28) recognized that ‘difference of climate, habits and customs of economic opportunity and industrial tradition, make strict uniformity in the condition of labour difficult of immediate attention.’ (art. 427, Versailles treaty). Tuula Honkenen and others also flag, as an indication of this, differences between states in the structuring of national obligations to contribute to UN budgets.
The Commonwealth is a voluntary association of 53 independent countries, consisting of the UK together with states that were previously part of the British Empire, and dependencies.
Just before France conceded to African demands for independence in the 1960s, it carefully organized its former colonies (Communauté financière d'Afrique or CFA countries) in a system of ‘compulsory solidarity’ which consisted of obliging the 14 African states to put 65 percent of their foreign currency reserves into the French Treasury, plus another 20 percent for financial liabilities.
CBDR is mentioned at least 4x: preamble (principle), article 2.2 (aims of the agreement), article 4 (mitigation/INDCs & long term low GHG emission development strategies) (Mbeva and Pauw 2016). There are still the two large groups: developing and developing countries, and reference to SIDS and LDCs (building on the Convention’s article 4, para 8—listing 9 conditions for consideration and para 9. It must be noted that the so-called technical correction that substituted ‘shall’ for ‘should’ in article 4.4, announced before the gaveling was a sleight of hand that gutted CBDR and made the core essentials (emissions reduction and provision of finance) non-binding.
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This article derives from the elaboration and further development of speech notes for the side event entitled ‘Applying Common but Differentiated Responsibilities in a Financing Sustainable Development Context,’ New York, 27 January 2015.
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Williams, M., Montes, M.F. Common but Differentiated Responsibilities: Which Way Forward?. Development 59, 114–120 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41301-017-0097-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41301-017-0097-6