The polarized debate amongst states, scholars, and practitioners over the right to development is underlined by salient paradoxes and contradictions. The rhetoric of the right to development has been deployed both as a language of resistance to oppose a hegemonic global economic system and as a language of power to assert national sovereignty and legitimize statist political and economic agendas. Apart from bedeviling the elaboration and implementation of the right to development, the insular political and ideological jockeying that has characterized the discourse raises pertinent questions about the normative objectivity of the international human rights movement.