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Introduction
- University of Pennsylvania Press
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Introduction A shift in the conceptualization of international human rights has begun: the international community appears to be more open today to advancing a holistic rights framework than it has ever been in the past. While the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in ∞Ω∂∫,∞ encompasses economic, social, and cultural rights as well as civil and political rights within its text, the subsequently drafted ∞Ω∏∏ International Covenants≤ divided rights into two distinct categories—civil and political rights, and economic, social, and cultural rights—with distinct levels of justiciability and requirements for realization. However, more recent international human rights treaties, such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, have rejected a division or hierarchy of rights, giving equal importance to economic, social, and cultural rights, and civil and political rights. Regional treaties, such as the European Social Charter and the African Charter on Human and Peoples ’ Rights, and treaty bodies, such as the Committee on the Rights of the Child, have been at the forefront of integrating economic, social, and cultural rights within their realm of protection. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) working in the field of protecting and advancing economic, social, and cultural rights are also being taken more seriously, and being provided with more support, within the treaty monitoring system and by regional organizations or domestic governments. Moreover, some of the human rights treaty bodies have begun to look at rights in an integrated manner, defining and expanding the content and scope of certain rights in order to deal with them in a logical context. For example, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women’s General Recommendation on women and health links women’s rights to nondiscrimination and health care, thereby linking a social right to a cross-cutting human right.≥ Despite these positive developments, a lack of political will to devote needed resources and implement infrastructural change in order to protect and advance economic, social and cultural rights remains apparent today. Within the international system, and at domestic levels, the eloquent statement made by the UN General Assembly in ∞Ω∂∫, that economic, social, cultural, civil, and political rights are indivisible and interrelated, has not yet translated into reality. There is therefore still a need to look beyond the bare words of the UDHR and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights to give true meaning to these rights. Words on paper alone do little justice to the aspirations inherent in these documents; the 2 Introduction rights they contain must be humanized, no mean feat in the face of rampant rhetoric. This means recognizing that, without progress in the realization of economic, social, and cultural rights, an ancient language is lost, families struggle in slums, communities go hungry, women’s bodies are exploited, children wait days at clinic doorsteps. Both bodies and spirits die. It is thus our intention in this book to go beyond the rhetoric. To do so, we envision three steps. The first is to explore conceptualizations of human rights that assist in dissolving the traditional, category-bound approach to economic, social, and cultural rights. The second step is to examine how an integrated approach to rights produces a more meaningful analysis of individual economic, social, and political rights. Craig Scott refers to this as looking ‘‘between’’ rights.∂ The third step is to demonstrate that these rights are justiciable and therefore tangible, whether through domestic, regional, or international fora. Until recently, the conceptualization of economic, social, and cultural rights was wanting in both clarity and dynamism. The authors in Part I of this volume make concrete suggestions for approaching these rights with a fresh eye. Craig Scott argues that a meaningful understanding of economic, social, and cultural rights will not occur until there is a conscious and radical breaking down of normative boundaries among the categories framed by each of the human rights treaties. As a part of this process, Scott proposes a simple yet fundamental change in the current practice of the six existing UN treaty bodies—he calls for substantive interaction, in order to harness the benefits of integrating diverse perspectives in the juridical construction of economic, social and cultural rights. Chisanga Puta-Chekwe and Nora Flood make a similar plea for breaking down categories, but frame it in the context of how certain NGOs have recharacterized economic, social, and cultural rights as integral and important ‘‘basic human rights...