AFRO-NETS> The Economist on Human Rights

["Claudio Schuftan" <aviva@netnam.vn>]

The Economist on Human Rights
-----------------------------


An Article From Economist.Com

Righting Wrongs

After achieving real gains in the past decade in improving political
and civil rights in many countries, some human-rights campaigners now
have a new target:  economic and social rights. In a sign of the times,
Amnesty International's ruling body is considering a change of strategy
to embrace these new goals. The move could backfire

UNTIL NOW, human-rights groups have left economic and social concerns
to humanitarians and philanthropists. When they have taken an interest
in such matters, it has been mostly to strengthen the case for politi-
cal crusading. Amartya Sen, a Nobel-prize-winning economist, famously
pointed out "in the terrible history of famines in the world, no sub-
stantial famine has ever occurred in any independent and democratic
country with a relatively free press". Human-rights campaigners took
this to heart. Human Rights Watch, for example, asserts "the best way
to prevent famine is to secure the right to free expression".

All this could change if the meeting of Amnesty International--taking
place in Dakar, Africa from August 17th to 25th--agrees on important
changes to its mandate. One of the first and largest of human-rights
groups, Amnesty's main policy committee has been developing a set of
resolutions over the past four years which would explicitly incorporate
economic and social conditions into its mandate. If the proposals are
endorsed it would alter the character of the organisation profoundly
and permanently. It could also pave the way for wide-ranging changes in
human-rights campaigning more generally.

Amnesty may be the most prominent human-rights group contemplating a
shift of focus, but it is not alone. Since 1993, the charter of the
Centre for Economic and Social Rights in New York has demanded that it
"challenge economic injustice as a violation of international human
rights law". In its strategic plan for the next three years, Oxfam,
Britain's leading development charity, lays out its belief in "rights
to a sustainable livelihood, and the rights and capacities to partici-
pate in societies and make positive changes to people's lives".

United Nations bodies are also keen to extend the concept. Since 1998,
the World Health Organisation (WHO) has been asking the international
community to recognise health as a human right. And the UN Human Rights
Commission recently stated that international trade law ought to be
harmonised with international human-rights law.

International support for human rights has been enshrined for more than
half a century in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was
ratified by the UN in the aftermath of the second world war and the
holocaust. The declaration was compelling as a statement of principles,
but too vague and general to be useful as a legal instrument. So during
the 1960s, two more covenants were thrashed out in an effort to provide
more substance: the first on civil and political rights and the second
on economic, social and cultural rights.

During the cold war, support for these was divided along obvious lines:
capitalists were keen on civil and political rights, communists on so-
cial and economic ones. Groups like Amnesty and Human Rights Watch
have, by publicising the plight of political prisoners and torture vic-
tims, and investigating atrocities and other abuses, helped to focus
attention on states which practised such behaviour. Until now, the sec-
ond covenant has been largely ignored.

So why are human-rights bodies so keen to broaden their remit now? The
short answer is that they have begun to wonder whether civil and po-
litical rights are a bit beside the point in many of the world's poor-
est countries. In particular, the AIDS pandemic in Africa is driving
the movement to demand that economic and social goods be treated as en-
titlements.

Extending the application of human rights is a perilous strategy. It is
bound to meet fierce, and equally principled, opposition

Advocates of this expansion point to the example of Botswana--a democ-
racy with a reasonably free press and healthy civil institutions. The
fact that Botswana suffers from the world's highest incidence of AIDS
proves that democracy and press freedom are not prophylactics. Human-
rights campaigners may feel that the governments of Botswana and South
Africa--where the incidence of AIDS is almost as bad--are not doing
enough to combat the disease, but they cannot blame failure on politi-
cal abuses. Nor can they tell other, less enlightened regimes that re-
specting civil and political rights will help to halt the spread of
AIDS.

Extending the application of human rights, though, is a perilous strat-
egy. It is bound to meet fierce, and equally principled, opposition.
Economic and social rights may have the same status on paper as civil
and political rights, but their philosophical grounding is often ques-
tioned.

Designating a good as a universal human right means that reasonable
people believe that under no government, under almost any circum-
stances, may that good be justly denied to anybody. Freedom from tor-
ture falls into that category, as do most other basic political and
civil rights. Even these rights, such as freedom of speech, sometimes
have to be tempered if they clash with the fundamental rights of oth-
ers.

But goods such as food and a decent home are simply not in this cate-
gory. Governments may intentionally torture their citizens; they do not
usually intentionally inflict on them poverty and ill-health and even
the best-intentioned governments, especially in poor countries, often
fail to ensure adequate food, shelter or health care for all their
citizens. The moral imperative to stop poverty or disease may be as
compelling as civil rights, but disputes about them cannot easily be
resolved by judges and courts, which have shown that they can handle
specific cases involving political and civil liberties.

Critics of expanded human rights also point to the difference in cost
between the old and the new. To guarantee civil and political rights,
such as the right to vote, is a relatively well-defined task. Economic
and social rights, by contrast, are much more difficult to define. Who
is to say when a person has had enough money spent on keeping him
healthy? There is no way to assess the costs of such a policy.

BLUNTING RIGHTS

Nevertheless, if human-rights campaigners succeed in deploying their
considerable campaigning skills to improve health and reduce poverty,
that might be a considerable gain. But in doing so, they risk diluting
the effectiveness of their campaigns against political abuses.

In addition, they risk alienating some of their traditional allies, not
least the Americans. America has not yet ratified the International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights because the US is con-
cerned about changes in international law, which could mean citizens
suing their governments for the enforcement of social and economic
rights. At a meeting earlier this year to prepare for the UN summit on
AIDS, America explicitly rejected a rights-based approach to the dis-
ease, preferring to regard it as a health, or when pressed, a national-
security issue.

Elevating social and economic claims to fundamental rights would also,
in effect, take these issues out of the political arena and place them
in the hands of judges and courts, subordinating the popular will, even
in democratic countries. A further risk, in practice, is that trade and
other international agreements may be framed (not always disinterest-
edly) to punish countries that violate the new rights--leaving the peo-
ple whose rights have been violated even poorer than they were to begin
with.

http://www.economist.com

Posted by
Claudio Schuftan
mailto:aviva@netnam.vn

--
Send mail for the `AFRO-NETS' conference to `<afro-nets@usa.healthnet.org>'.
Mail administrative requests to `<majordomo@usa.healthnet.org>'.
For additional assistance, send mail to:  `<owner-afro-nets@usa.healthnet.org>'.