This volume is comprised of essays initially presented in the framework of a Colloquium on Human Rights and Development organised in 1999 by the Centre for European Constitutional Law, under the auspices of the Commission of the European Union. It has the advantage of combining theoretical and "on the field" approaches on one of the most controversial issues of our time: the relation between human rights and the aspirations of economic development of the nations of the Third World. This question is related to a multitude of other issues: inter alia, the universality of human rights and constitutionalism in general, the hierarchy between civil and political freedoms and social rights, the efficiency -and the legitimation- of the intervention of international organizations in this field.