Debating Economic and Social Rights

Photo:Shutterstock/Donatas Dabravolskas (All rights reserved)

Photo: Boris Stroujko/Shutterstock (All rights reserved)

Are legal protections useful to activists fighting poverty?

Almost 70 years ago, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights gave equal recognition to economic and social rights, alongside civil and political rights. Yet there is continued controversy as to whether the human rights to food, housing, education, or health deserve such recognition or are properly the subject of legal protection and adjudication. Why?

Is it simply a reflection of a political bias that distrusts the welfare state model that is supposedly implicit in programs to fulfil these rights? Or are there genuine differences between, for example, a right to food and a right to free speech that suggest only the latter can be protected effectively through law and the courts? In any case, should struggles for social justice rely on the courts? How does the reframing of these struggles in the language of human rights help?

 

 

 

A post-pandemic world: well-being for all or deepening inequality?

By: Guillermo Torres
Español

Putting fear aside as we emerge from this pandemic will allow space for what we value most in people: empathy, solidarity and mutual support.

Returning to “normal” is impossible for India’s tea plantation workers

By: Shreya Sen
Español

Workers in India’s tea plantations have pre-existing health and environmental conditions that make them highly vulnerable to COVID-19, making a return to “normal” ...

Who will defend the rule of law, if not Amnesty?

By: Sonya Sceats
Español | Français

As Amnesty frames its goals in terms of confronting power and structural injustice, it risks weakening its defense of the rule of law—at precisely the moment when ...

New policies for a new crisis

By: Koldo Casla
Español

Human rights activists don’t have all the answers to the pandemic, but they should focus on protecting the most vulnerable, and be alert to creeping authoritarianism.

Global HIV/AIDS response, shows human rights is path to success against COVID-19

By: Steven L. B. Jensen
Español | Français

The global response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic found success when it put human rights at the core of its efforts, a lesson of key importance to our present and future ...

It’s time for human rights NGOs to challenge systems, not symptoms

By: Sherif Elsayed-Ali
Español

To win support, human rights NGOs must challenge systems, not symptoms, step up their work on ESR, and provide practical solutions to the problems they expose.

Putting human rights at the centre of struggles for health and social equality

By: Alicia Ely Yamin
Español

We’ve made progress on economic and social rights, but the human rights community needs new, much more collaborative strategies to challenge the inequalities underlying ...

Economic and social rights force us to pressure a return to the state

By: Katharine G. Young
Español | Français

Constitutional entrenchment is only part of the battle for recognition of economic and social rights, as many South African cases have made clear.

What does that mean here? Localizing human rights in the UK

By: Koldo Casla & Kath Dalmeny
Español

Some people believe that there is a lot of skepticism towards international human rights in England, but experiences of localization of rights are making a difference ...

The United States’ Global Water Strategy must recognize these rights at home

By: Inga T. Winkler & JoAnn Kamuf Ward
Español

The United States—and many other wealthy nations—are facing an invisible but profound crisis of sanitation coverage that disproportionately affects poor and rural ...

Irish Traveller communities in Cork monitor and campaign for social rights

By: Koldo Casla

Traveller communities in Ireland are using international human rights law to monitor their housing conditions and to demand action from the local council. And they ...

Court judgements are shaking political foundations—and upholding rights

By: James A. Goldston
Español

In Kenya, Guatemala and Brazil, courts have defied presidents and shaken up politics—is court-centric advocacy one of the few remaining avenues to legitimately ...

Evicted rights in Spain: no room of one’s own

By: Koldo Casla
Español

Thousands of people are being evicted in Spain due to austerity measures, and women are disproportionately affected by structural inequality.

Human rights are not losing traction in the global South

By: Sakiko Fukuda-Parr 
Español

In the debate on whether human rights have stalled, analysts are ignoring huge strides in socioeconomic improvements in the global South.

Putting universality into the Universal Periodic Review

By: Allison Corkery 
Español

The Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review is systematically marginalizing economic and social rights.

The UK government cannot reconcile austerity measures with human rights

By: Jamie Burton & Alice Donald & Koldo Casla

UK governments have claimed austerity measures are necessary while ignoring the disproportionate adverse effects on marginalized groups.

The International Labour Organization: workers rights champion or 90-pound weakling?

By: Gordon Digiacomo

The ILO oversees the global protection of workers’ rights. It should consider instigating and/or supporting litigation in courts to serve that purpose.

Using budget analysis to confront governments: what practitioners need to know

By: Ian Allen & Megan Manion & Thandi Matthews & Robert Ralston

Millions of dollars that could address socio-economic disparities are lost through illicit financial flows, but budget analysis could help.

Where’s the evidence? Moving from ideology to data in economic and social rights

By: Octavio Luiz Motta Ferraz
Español | Português

To advance the polarized openGlobalRights debate on economic and social rights, we need more empirical research, and less ideology.

Open budgets, open politics?

By: Dan Berliner
Español | Français

Budget transparency has the potential to make governments more accountable, but research shows that it occurs most often where it is least needed.

Workers’ rights really are human rights

By: Virginia Mantouvalou

Workers’ rights are human rights, and we have a moral and legal obligation to protect them. No one should be allowed to exploit workers simply to run a more profitable ...

Winners and losers: how budgeting for human rights can help the poor

By: Helena Hofbauer
Español | Bahasa | Français | 简体中文

Recent research reveals the impact that international covenants could have on government taxation and expenditures. Based on civil society organization (CSO) campaigns ...

Beyond the courts – protecting economic and social rights

By: Irene Khan  & David Petrasek
Français | Español | العربية

The overlapping and interdependent nature of human rights suggests efforts to protect only some rights in law are misguided. The reason for legalizing economic ...

Yes, economic and social rights really are human rights

By: Stanley Ibe
Español

The argument that socio-economic rights are not “real” human rights is far too simplistic. While the phrase “progressive realization” gives many governments an ...

Human rights and social justice: the in(di)visible link

By: Ignacio Saiz & Alicia Ely Yamin

The distinction that Aryeh Neier draws between human rights and social justice is premised on a limited notion of what constitutes “power”, argue Ignacio Saiz and ...

 
 
Stay connected! Join our weekly newsletter to stay up-to-date on our newest content.  SUBSCRIBE