Excellent comments by Lukka, Alex and Cecilio. So now, I think we all have come to certain common denominators, which are very crucial in order to make sense of human rights. The take home from this week's forum is as follows:
1. There is a difference between human rights on the one hand and legal rights on the other. Human rights can, and indeed many do, exist without being legal rights. When human rights are also legal rights, they merely make the human rights more effective. All human rights are not legal rights, much in the same way that all legal rights are not human rights. Therefore, RtD is indeed a human right as is emphatically stated in several declarations, although it is not a legal right in most jurisdictions around the world (except some regional systems like the African system and countries like South Africa).
2. Court of law or judicial enforcement is only one way of making States accountable for non-fulfillment of human rights obligations. Other ways include free press and fair elections. Then there are the global human rights charter and treaty bodies whose decisions or reports are not binding on States, but they act on the principle of naming and shaming. The Universal Perioding Review includes assessment of several human rights situations of States although they may not be legal rights in the country concerned. Similarly, human rights impact assessments, national human rights commissions, NGO reports, all are ways of making States accountable. All these means are effective in different ways ad in differing degrees, nonetheless, they are all modes of making States accountable. If that be so, the fact that RtD is not justiciable before courts of law does not mean that States cannot be made accountable for its violation or non-fulfillment.