Social and Economic Rights – Step-Children of the Human

Rights Movement? ER 11, Gov E-1040

Spring 2012

The Declaration

Social and Economic Rights • Article 17.• (1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with

others.

• Article 22.• Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled

to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

• Article 23.• (1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and

favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.• (2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal

work.

Continued… • Article 25.• (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate

for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

• Article 26.• (1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be

free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. (…)

International Covenant on Social, Economic, and Cultural Rights (Light green = signed but not ratified)

US policy • based on distinction between

two kinds of rights found in ICCPR and ICESCR

– Negative vs. positive rights

• right to a minimal subsistence not formally recognized as human right in US policy (Republican presidents), or not worth picking a fight with Congress for (Democratic presidents)

– Implications for Universal Health Care

Declaration on the Right to Development (Gen. As. 1986)

Article 1 • 1. The right to development is an inalienable human right by

virtue of which every human person and all peoples are entitled to participate in, contribute to, and enjoy economic, social, cultural and political development, in which all human rights and fundamental freedoms can be fully realized.

• 2. The human right to development also implies the full realization of the right of peoples to self-determination, which includes, subject to the relevant provisions of both International Covenants on Human Rights, the exercise of their inalienable right to full sovereignty over all their natural wealth and resources.

VIENNA DECLARATION AND PROGRAMME OF ACTION

• 5. All human rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent and interrelated. The international community must treat human rights globally in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing, and with the same emphasis. (…)

• 8. Democracy, development and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms are interdependent and mutually reinforcing. (…)

Henry Shue provides philosophical support

• If human beings have any rights at all, they also have a right to physical security and a right to subsistence

• Argument against considering basic civil and political rights as “more basic” than basic social and economic rights

Negative and Positive Rights

• failure to recognize right to subsistence (while accepting that there is a right to physical security) rests upon acceptance of false dichotomy

• Concludes that there should be substantive changes in US foreign policy, beginning with ratification of ICESCR

Basic right to physical security

• Can’t enjoy any right supposedly protected by society if someone can credibly threaten him or her with murder, rape, beating, etc.

• If any right is to be exercised except at great risk, physical security must be protected

• If personhood is protected by rights in any way, then that must be so

Basic right to subsistence

• No one can enjoy any right that is supposedly protected if he or she lacks the essentials for a reasonably healthy and active life

• Deficiencies in means of subsistence can be just as fatal, incapacitating, or painful as violations of physical security

Objection

• “But surely, wrongful intrusions are morally worse than failures to provide aid. So does that not show that a right to physical security is more basic than a right to subsistence?”

• Killing is worse than letting die! (?)

Still much debated among philosophers whether, other things being equal, inflicting

harm is worse than letting harm happen

Two Bathtub cases

Response • But even if we grant that wrongful intrusions are worse, other

things being equal, than omissions to aid, conclusion would not show much

• might introduce only marginal difference in the manner in which we think of rights to subsistence and rights to physical security as basic

• Difference within the realm of “paramount importance”

Notice also:

• Often thought that “negative rights” are just a matter of the state not being abusive – whereas “positive rights” are costly

• Wrong: guaranteeing negative rights requires infrastructure: police; courts; prisons, etc.

Main result

• The status of social and economic rights qua human rights should not be in doubt

• Practically speaking: Shue is correct that one cannot coherently support ICCPR and not support ICESCR

• Maybe social and economic rights are more fundamental than civil and political rights?

• Argument sometimes made by developing country governments (e.g. China)

• Opposing: Sen

• Maybe social and economic rights are more fundamental than civil and political rights?

• Argument sometimes made by developing country governments (e.g. China)

• Opposing: Sen

Sen on Famines • Famines have tended to occur in colonial territories governed

by rulers from elsewhere (Bengal, Ireland), or in one-party states (Ukraine, China), or in military dictatorships (Ethiopia, Somalia)

• Authoritarian rulers tend to lack incentive to take timely preventive measures against famines

• No famine has ever happened in functioning democracy

Sen on Famines, Cont. • divisive social phenomena: rare to find famine that

affects more than 5 or 10% of the population

• Famine prevention depends on political arrangements for entitlement protection

• During Irish famine in 1840s, which killed higher proportion of population than any other famine in recorded history, Ireland never stopped sending food to England

Sen, Development as Freedom

• Development: process of expanding freedoms that people enjoy – process that folds in realization of human rights

• Focusing on human freedoms contrasts with narrower views, e.g., identifying development with growth of GDP, or rise in personal incomes, or industrialization, or technological advance

• freedoms depend also on other determinants, such as social and economic arrangements as well as political and civil rights.

Paul Farmer

• Emphasizes the importance of public health issues for the human rights movement, and the importance of human rights for the improvement of public health

Paul Farmer

• Emphasizes importance of public health issues for human rights movement, and importance of human rights for the improvement of public health

Structural Violence

• systematic ways in which social structures kill people slowly by preventing them from meeting basic needs

• Life spans reduced when people are socially dominated, politically oppressed, economically exploited

• elitism, ethnocentrism, classism, racism, sexism, adultism, nationalism, heterosexism, ageism