Justicability of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in the Inter-American System of Protection of Human Rights: Beyond Traditional Paradigms and Notions

The separation of human rights into two distinct sets remains the underlying paradigm of most legal thinking produced on the subject of economic, social, and cultural rights. From this perspective international law appears as a static, rigid system of watertight legal compartments: even when acknowledging some interrelatedness, the compartments remain the rule nevertheless. This article is written from a perspective that takes a different view. Artificial separations are just that: artificial. Rights in real life are interwoven and each, in its own right, pose challenges to the legal mind, to provide a remedy. Justiciability is no longer a matter of perfectly dissecting and distinguishing the inseparable but of finding the key relations between apparently separate notions. Remedies can take "a myriad of forms." By looking into the practice of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights through the analysis of its case law, this article first provides a theoretical point of departure under general international law for understanding economic, social, and cultural rights as primary rules. It then analyses the current jurisprudence of the Court in its integrated approach to rights. It finally goes on to analyze the different manners in which this organ has been providing remedies for violations of these primary rules. From the implementation of interim measures in favor of HIV patients (right to health) to the development of doctrinal notions of the right to life including the right to a "dignified and decent existence" to its substantive approach to the interpretation of human rights under the American Convention, this article argues that the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights—paradoxically coming from a poverty-stricken region—is contributing to a new era of effectively dealing with violations of economic, social, and cultural rights.