Economic Rights are invoked by activists, politicians, and citizens as demands for higher wages, universal health care, public schooling, and many other public goods. This article briefly outlines the basic premises and challenges of economic rights.
Origins of Economic Rights
Economic rights are derived from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) (1948), a document drafted by the United Nations General Assembly to formalize a set of standards for the protection of basic individual freedoms, human dignity, and purposive agency. In 1966, the global community issued the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) which has since been ratified by 69 of the 160 state parties to the agreement.
Along with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which protects the physical, civic, and representational rights of persons, these three documents are known at the International Bill of Human Rights.
The ICESCR establishes rights of individuals to “gain his living by work which he freely chooses or accepts” (Article 6), receive equal pay for equal work (Article 7), form and join trade unions (Article 8), and receive a basic level of education (Article 13), among others . These rights can be conceptually separated into three basic economic rights: an adequate standard of living, employment without discrimination, and a Basic Income Guarantee.
Challenges to Fulfilling Economic Rights
At least three conceptual challenges restrict the effectiveness of international efforts to honor the economic rights of individuals. This issues are negative versus positive rights obligations; universal measurement criteria; and separation from development goals.
First, negative rights are those which protect persons from fear, oppression, or restrictions of freedom. Civil and political rights are negative rights because they protect persons from interferences such as political discrimination (Article 3), unjust killing (Article 6), and torture (Article 7) . These rights are different from positive rights which entitle person to provisions, such as socialized education or health care.
Most of the economic, social, and cultural rights are viewed as positive rights because their fulfillment requires the provision of economic opportunities, social welfares, or cultural exceptions. This is a challenge for impoverished states with limited resources to allocate for the benefit of the most vulnerable citizens.
Second, there are no universally agreed upon measurements for the fulfillment of economic rights. What constitutes poverty, malnutrition, illiteracy, and discrimination is both difficult to quantify (is poverty a household income of less than $2.50/day or $10/day, for example) and is difficult to calculate accurately across all nations (it is impossible to count the number of people living in the slums of Mexico City, let along figure out how much each person is earning). Because of these constraints, it is difficult to hold a country legally responsible for the failure to fulfill its binding responsibility to the ICESCR.
Further complicating this issue is that nations are not expected to meet the needs of all citizens upon ratification of the ICESCR. The treaty requires that states realize economic rights “progressively” and make an effort to fulfill rights to the state’s maximum capability. The “effort of a government” is even more subjective than a concept like “poverty”. Also, the “maximum capability” of a state to fulfill economic rights is directly effected by the priorities of a state. Spending on national security could arguably be more important to economic growth than spending on education.
Finally, poverty is the biggest barrier to universal actualization of economic rights. Economic development is a large component of a state’s capacity to fulfill its responsibilities to citizens. But, despite global aid efforts and structural adjustment experiments, the number of the world's poor continues to rise. Political economists argue institutions are to blame for the failure of universal growth over the last couple of decades.
Corruption, weak institutions, and political instability lock nations into poverty traps that prevent states to rise above the poverty line. Who then is responsible for the development of the most at-risk countries? Many of these issues transcend national boundaries, but the responsibility rests solely on the signatories of the ICESCR.
Sources:
United Nations Declaration of Human Rights
United Nations International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights
United Nations International Covenant on Civic and Political Rights
Hertel, Shareen and Minkler, S. 2007. Economic Rights: Conceptual, Measurement, and Policy Issues. Cambridge University Press.
Timothy Dzurilla - Dzurilla has been writing about food and food culture for 7 years for various on and off line newspapers. Currently in graduate school ...
