As will become evident through the course of this chapter, development in its human rights context is primarily a value that translates into individual and communal well-being. This well-being may be linked to industrial or other financial development, although the correlation between the two is neither self-evident nor necessary. If this right to well-being is to make a difference in the lives of people, whether in poor or rich nations, it must be susceptible to quantifiable measurement through which one is able to assess its progress and realisation. In the last decade experts have developed a list of detailed indicators which allow us to assess well-being more accurately. At the same time, wealthy nations have abandoned ad hoc unilateral efforts to assist their poorer neighbours to escape perpetual cycles of poverty by entering into institutionalised multilateral commitments to contribute part of their annual earnings to developmental goals. These goals are also vigorously pursued by multilateral development banks, such as the World Bank and the African Development Bank.

Chapter 3 discusses sovereign debt theory and practice. It goes through the history of sovereign debt and how the current theories of borrowing and lending developed in the 1980s. I argue that countries want to be part of global society, and that means they sometimes repay unsustainable debt. The chapter dives into why countries might default, when they might default, how often countries have defaulted, and what the economic and political costs are. I then describe what happens when countries need to restructure their sovereign debt, both in theory and with a practical guide for the process. Finally, in another technical section, I describe a sovereign debt model. The model explains when countries should have no willingness to repay their debt. It allows me to characterise a set of stylised macroeconomic facts that usually accompany sovereign debt defaults. The default set that comes out of the model states when countries should default. These facts and default set (not part of the technical section) are used in Chapters 6, 8, and 10. Chapter 3 is the last overview chapter; the rest are case studies.

The vulnerability of children is rather different from that of other vulnerable groups, in that at different stages of their development they are mostly dependent on others for their survival and cannot (or are not allowed to) partake in social or political life in the same way as adults. Unlike all other vulnerable persons, the well-being of children is entrusted to their parents and guardians and hence many of the issues facing children have traditionally been perceived through the lens of family relationships and family law, as opposed to human rights law.The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and its subsequent protocols has somewhat changed this state of affairs by introducing several principles which transform children from objects to real subjects of the law. Unless states take active and concerted measures to prevent and punish the perpetrators (and end-users) of such offences, the exploitation of children will remain a profitable enterprise. Without investment in the lives of children through the use of maximum available resources, states will remain weak and children disempowered. This chapter examines the emergence of a specialised human rights regime for children, as well as the guiding principles found in the CRC. It then goes on to illustrate how poverty and other factors exacerbate the vulnerabilities of children.