Indivisible Human Rights: A History

Chapter 1: Indivisible, Interdependent, and Interrelated Human Rights

Chapter 1 Indivisible, Interdependent, and Interrelated Human Rights It is often said that all human rights are “indivisible, interdependent, and interrelated.” This tripartite formulation is taken as given. In recent years, the United Nations has boldly declared that the indivisibility, interdependency, and interrelatedness of human rights is “beyond dispute .” This is an interesting claim, considering that this book explores the unsettled and contested nature of the indivisibility of especially the two grand categories of civil and political, and economic, social, and cultural rights. Even if indivisibility is not beyond dispute, many continue to ascribe indivisibility, interdependency, and interrelatedness to the nature or character of contemporary human rights, as if this were entirely self-evident. For the U.N. as well as others, declaring the matter settled should prompt us to inquire: What was settled? How was it settled? When used to describe the qualities or characteristics of human rights, the adjectives “indivisible,” “interrelated,” and “interdependent” usually come as a package (along with “universal”), or the separate words are used interchangeably. This is widely reflected in the scholarly literature, writings of human rights advocates and practitioners, and authoritative interpretations1 especially surrounding the content and obligations of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Craig Scott urges us not to pay too much attention to semantics when we consider the different meanings that the terms “indivisible,” “interdependent,” and “interrelated” may convey.2 I think we should ignore this advice, because a great deal of confusion persists about what these adjectives tell us about human rights. While the statement “human rights are indivisible, interdependent, and interrelated ” seems to be the answer to a question, it is unclear what that question is. Do these adjectives say something about how human rights function, or what they mean conceptually? Do they tell us something 2 Chapter 1 about the historical development of contemporary human rights? Do they say something about the politics of human rights? Do these adjectives convey real meaning, or are they merely symbolic? I liken the package of indivisible, interdependent, and interrelated human rights to the box of wires in my closet. I need an extension cord, so I go to my box, and hunt for one. I find one, but upon attempting to retrieve it, I pull up a mass of wires: my extension cord is intertwined with telephone cords, TV cable, speaker wires, audio cables, other extension cords, and a surge protector. After struggling to free my extension cord, I throw the tangled mass back into the box, thinking to myself that I really should clean up that mess sometime soon. This book attempts to undertake just such a task and bring some sense of clarity to the box of wires that is indivisible, interdependent, and interrelated human rights. The first thing we can say with some confidence is that these concepts are centrally concerned about the relationships between the two grand categories of civil and political, and economic, social, and cultural rights. Even more than that, these adjectives are used most often in relation to the status, importance, or equality of economic and social rights vis-à-vis civil and political rights. Interestingly enough, while the terms “interdependent” and “interconnected” were used (but not often) during to the drafting of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the word “indivisible” was not. That term first emerged in the early 1950s, during the most fascinating period in the normative development of contemporary human rights at the U.N.—the drafting of first one, then the two Covenants on Human Rights that together with the Universal Declaration make up the International Bill of Rights. During those debates, the concept of indivisibility underwent a subtle but important transformation. While it began as a strong descriptive adjective relating to the fundamental unity of the rights in the Universal Declaration , it quickly became a rhetoric for postcolonial aspirations. That rhetoric deepened during the 1960s and 1970s, when it was deployed as a revisionist view of human rights, prioritizing economic, social, and cultural rights over civil and political rights, indispensible and inextricably linked to a variety of agendas of great importance to the developing world. Not until the 1990s did the rhetoric of indivisibility shift again. It was recast to include interdependency and interrelatedness in a rhetoric of restoration of the spirit of the fundamental unity (or, some might say, organic unity) of the rights contained in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I say “underlying” because the Universal Declaration barely categorizes rights...