Response by Leonard S. Rubenstein

This exchange has helped identify common ground and focus questions before us. Kenneth Roth and I agree that strategies for realizing economic, social, and cultural rights must not only include but also go beyond "naming and shaming." I read his initial article as contending that naming and shaming is "the most productive way" for international human rights organizations to address these rights and criticizing other strategies as ineffective or even counterproductive. He now agrees to the existence of "other important methodologies";¹ I believe discussion of these other methods to achieve economic, social, and cultural rights remains one of the key tasks of the international human rights movement.

On the question of allocating resources to realize economic, social, and cultural rights, I agree with Ken Roth that international human rights organizations, using naming and shaming strategies, can and should challenge allocation decisions when they are arbitrary or discriminatory and, as I point out below, when they fail to fulfill obligations for particular rights. Another question, though, also demands our attention: What should these organizations do in the face of the failure, or even resistance, of both national governments and international donors to provide the resources desperately needed to realize economic, social, and cultural rights that are within their capacity to provide. I believe that international human rights organizations should step up their efforts, often in conjunction with partners in effected countries, to increase overall spending on the realization of economic, social, and cultural rights, always seeking to enlarge the pot of resources; doing so, however, will require strategies in addition to naming and shaming.

In seeking increased resources, advocates must always be attentive to the potential danger that officials responsible for spending will offset increased spending in one area with decreases in another, but this need not be a zero-sum game. Ken Roth notes that I provide no examples where the pot was in fact increased; but here is one in the key area of international assistance, where international human rights organizations contribute their skills and credibility with greatest success. In fiscal year 2004, in response to concerted pressures from a variety of constituencies, including human rights organizations, the United States Congress appropriated billions of new dollars for global AIDS and other social needs. This represented a 16.9 percent increase in real terms. While the resource commitment remains far below the 0.7 percent share recommended by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, it remains significant not only because it was a product of concerted advocacy by many constituencies but also because advocates' demands that the pot be enlarged rather than reallocated were mostly successful.

We also have to be sophisticated in understanding the impact of increased spending in one realm on needs in another. I previously identified my organization's concern that significant new resources for AIDS programs not be implemented in such a way that they take nurses, doctors, and other health workers away from other health programs. But this result is not an inevitable tradeoff of needs; resources as a whole have indeed increased, and part of our task is to assure that new resources are deployed, systems are designed, and advocacy is employed to strengthen the health system as a whole. There will be occasions, of course, when a government chooses one need over another, and in such cases the response should be further advocacy to obtain the resources for the unmet needs.

To achieve these resource increases, it will be necessary to use new tactics and strategies. Ken Roth is satisfied that existing communications and public opinion strategies are a "highly efficient way to secure human rights policy changes,"² but I think we are in agreement that they are not likely to be effective, on their own, in gaining new resources to realize economic and social rights. I would like to see a serious discussion of new strategies to increase spending from relevant decision makers. There is good reason to believe that sophisticated constituency organizing, sometimes legislative district by legislative district, and other techniques more traditionally associated with political organizing are among those needed. Certainly we should consider the...