Monitoring Policy Making at the United Nations |
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Roundtable on Economic and Social Rights: Summary of Discussions Roundtable on Economic and Social Rights
Summary of the DiscussionsMay 2, 1997
New York CityThere were four sessions, each of which was opened with two speakers. The following text summarizes the eight speakers and provides brief highlights of the rest of the discussion.
Stephen Marks: International Service for Human Rights; Columbia UniversityIn human rights conferences, there are often discussions about whether particular rights are legitimate. This is especially true of economic and social rights. But today’s roundtable assumes the validity of economic and social rights. Instead we will consider what we can do jointly to defend and advance these rights.
There are three elements of the new momentum in the field of economic and social rights: (1)globalization, neoliberalism, and structural adjustment have had negative consequences for social and economic conditions of life and so they have led to new affirmations of economic and social rights,
(2)recent intergovernmental activity has developed a stronger foundation for economic and social rights: emerging jurisprudence on the UN Committee on Economic and Social Rights, on-site compliance visits and special rapporteurs, work within CEDAW and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the results of the world summits (esp. Vienna, Copenhagen and Beijing) and regional initiatives like the revised European Social Charter, and
(3)NGOs have been very active in this field, as evidenced by the founding of the Center for Economic and Social Rights, the change in policy of Human Rights Watch to accept economic and social rights, activities of the People’s Decade for Human Rights Education, initiatives of FIDH and the International Service for Human Rights, and the work of the recent Maastrict Conference.
Lucy Lamarche: FIDH International Board; Université de Québec à Montreal
FIDH believes that economic, social and cultural rights are not just about strategy but about building a common understanding on the rights themselves, starting by calling them rights for all needs. FIDH has discovered that work on economic and social rights requires input from those working outside the human rights field, and it must take into account constitutional and national traditions as well as the perspective of concerned populations. FIDH has recently conducted important field missions – esp. in Burma, Nigeria, and Palestine – that embraced economic and social rights and civil and political rights. FIDH has also decided to make economic and social rights the focus of its upcoming Congress in Dakar in 1998. The momentum of economic and social rights is so great that even financial institutions such as the World Bank and OECD are making these rights their concern. We must press for a new economic and social rights agenda in the global arena.
Philip Harvey – ESHRAN; Rutgers University School of Law
We are all gathered here to work on strategies for promoting broader recognition of economic and social human rights. At the end of the twentieth century, we’re dealing with a paradox: that of getting governments to recognize the legitimacy of these rights when, at the same time, the substantive issues embodied in them are always on the table.
Our primary task is to connect practical struggles with human rights concepts and issues. We must break down that barrier—the one between practical advocacy and human rights advocacy. To that end, we need to take four kinds of initiatives:
1)Increase communication and communication among advocates. Initiatives like this conference, for example, are rare, and need to happen more often. Also needed: internet discussion groups, newsletters and so forth.
2)Increase communication between human rights organizations and advocacy organizations.
3)Substantive engagement, demonstrating the usefulness of human rights methodology for social advocacy organizations. We should encourage their participation in reporting and monitoring under human rights agreements—defining standards, collecting data, etc. On the other side, social justice advocates can show traditional human rights groups that becoming involved in economic and social rights advocacy will be useful for them. Reporting methods may be different from those used for political and civil human rights. But as Roosevelt said, "hungry men are not free men, they’re the stuff of which dictatorships are made"—a strong statement of the indivisibility of rights, not just in principle, but in reality.
4)All of the above require resources. We should figure out how to raise and pool resources for conferences and other actions like this one today.
If advocacy groups start talking in human rights terms, it would alter the political landscape!
Rebeca Rios Kohn – UNICEF
It has been a long struggle, but UNICEF is now promoting the rights of children as central to its work. Rights have long been seen as "political." Our primary concern has traditionally been reducing infant and child mortality, and increasing access to health care. In the 1980s we started making major progress—we finally had the technology to allow governments to move forward. Immunization was reaching the 80% level. We could finally turn our attention to such issues as child labor and sexual exploitation. At the 1990 World Summit on Children, we got pulled into the campaign to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child. At the time we didn’t think it would be successful. But as countries started coming forward to ratify this important treaty, we began to see the campaign as much more than a bureaucratic exercise.
UNICEF soon adopted a new mission statement with children’s rights at its very core. Now we are explicitly guided by the Convention on the Rights of the Child. National monitoring mechanisms are being put into place. We’ve moved from a concern with needs to a concern with rights. And we’re not tolerating double standards for developing versus advanced countries.
In the long run, we need to develop an entire "culture of rights" so as not to pit one group against another.
Shulamith Koenig – People’s Decade for Human Rights Education
We are witnessing a paradigm shift from civil rights to human rights. I believe that the "human rights revolution" began with affirming the indivisibility and interconnectedness of all categories of human rights at the 1992 World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna. We can use this holistic paradigm to help grasp the horrendous human rights violations occurring under globalization and to teach people how to use a human rights analysis on their own behalf.
Through our activism, we have created a public space for human rights education. The 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights offers us the chance to launch an international campaign with a view toward reaching 1-5 social justice organizations per country. Our overarching goal: to create a political culture based on human rights.
Roger Normand – Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR)
The main problem we all face is the lack of clear alternatives to existing arrangements. If a human rights paradigm is to be that alternative, it needs more substance and meaning for ordinary people. It needs to go beyond legalism.
I would identify three key components to human rights work: 1)research and data gathering;
2)grassroots/local political activism; and
3)a multi-pronged strategy.
There continues to be an enormous gap between popular constituencies and the elite language of law. At CESR we are trying to mediate between the two, to listen and to help people gain power in the international arena. Working with coalitions is never easy. Diverse groups often speak different languages and have different agendas. Change at the local level, however, must be our most important priority. A project’s short-term success must sometimes be sacrificed to that longer-term goal.
Ward Morehouse – Council on International and Public Affairs (CIPA)
We should banish the word "globalization" and substitute the awkward but more accurate term "global corporatization," since it is the TNCs that are the driving force behind fundamental changes in the global political economy. They constitute a new class of actors on the global stage, actors that command greater power and resources than many nation-states. Traditional methods of dealing with human rights violations haven’t kept pace.
To illustrate the scale of the concentration of wealth and power of the largest corporations, let me offer a few salient numbers. In 1994, the revenues of the 500 largest TNCs rose by 9% and profits by a whopping 62%. All this at the same time as ¼ million jobs were eliminated. The top 200 corporations had assets (measured as share of world GDP) of 17% in the mid-1960s; 24% in 1982; and over 32% in 1995. This increasing domination of the global economy by the TNCs is concurrent with growing deprivation on the part of the world’s majority: conservatively estimated, 800,000,000 live below the poverty line and 1.3 billion live on $1 a day. These trends are dynamic, not static.
The World Bank may be incorporating the language of human rights into its policy statements, but it is working at cross-purposes to the ILO, for example, by pressing for labor market policies that are more "flexible" and guaranteeing the inalienable right of capital mobility and the total freedom of investment.
There is an enormous need to build alternative structures. At TOES (The Other Economic Summit) in Denver this coming June, such alternatives will be high on the agenda. Cross-border organizing, solidarity building and labor rights organizing are the kinds of tactics that must be pursued as we struggle for full realization of economic and social human rights.
Peggy Crane – Economic and Social Human Rights Advocacy Network (ESHRAN)
As a long-time social justice activist, my imagination has been caught by the potential of human rights as an avenue into questions of equity and justice, both domestically and internationally. It strikes me as a powerful consciousness-raising and organizing tool and a much-needed moral starting point.
I’d like to speak about the effects of globalization on activism. In March 1995, I represented ESHRAN at the Social Summit in Copenhagen. I was soon to discover that the world of NGOs—the non-governmental organizations who, along with official representatives of governments, were present at the conference—was quite unlike my familiar turf of social justice activism. NGOs encompass everything from the National Rifle Association to the Red Cross to the Nicaragua Solidarity Network. Some are large, well funded and government-friendly. Others are a guy with a business card. Some are mainstream while others are outspokenly radical. Most are horizontal as opposed to vertical networks, unconnected to mass constituencies. This globalized model of activism does offer the advantage of greater international cooperation and communication. But human rights can get pretty disembodied in this climate.
At UN conferences, the NGO discourse, even at its best, tends to follow a politically fashionable line: "civil society = good" "state = bad." National governments are no longer seen as appropriate actors capable of promoting the welfare of their citizens. Unfortunately, this feeds quite nicely into conservative government-bashing, the dismantling of the welfare state and the neoliberal project generally.
For many NGOs, the only kinds of activism worth pursuing are local and the global, as if one can magically bypass the state altogether. By insisting that the state is no longer relevant to the project of human rights and liberation, we are obliterating the connection between the local and the global and making it invisible, thus invalidating political struggles where they must, of necessity, occur.
From the bottom up
People believe they have rights. They must be organized domestically into a political force that can make an impact at election time. They don’t believe in the freedom to starve.– Loretta Ross, Center for Human Rights Education
A rights-based approach is a people-centered approach. The Human Development Report identifies poverty itself as a denial of human rights. – Håkan Björkman, Human Development Report
It would be a big mistake to conduct a human rights campaign from the top down. We need to do more than "liase" with grassroots organizations. – Peter Weiss, Center for Constitutional Rights
We need to forge links between the academic community, human rights advocates and NGOs. – Robert Latham, Social Science Research Council
Human Rights and Politics
We need a strategic understanding of the struggle and a framework of analysis. We need a strategic as opposed to a tactical view. – Sumner Rosen, Jobs Now
In the field of public health we are working on connecting economic and social conditions to the evidence in terms of real health conditions. This approach is being attacked by its opponents as the illegitimate politicization of public health. – Lynn Freedman, Law and Policy Project, Columbia University
Human rights monitoring and education must be joined with political pressure to effect a "mobilization of shame." Otherwise, human rights monitoring reports are nothing more than lifeless documents. – Susana Chiarotti, Gender, Law and Development Institute
On ideology
In this period there has been a shift in the U.S. toward a consensus that the era of big government and of "Rooseveltism" is over; that the market should replace government as ultimate guarantor of human needs. This is what we’re up against. – Stephen P. Marks, International Service for Human Rights
The ascendance free markets, drastic cuts in social spending and the reduced role of government do not come out of natural processes. We should not lie down and accept these as inevitable outcomes of globalization. – Jack Hammond, Human Rights Program, Hunter College, CUNY
On law and litigation
Even if you lose, litigation is important for getting issues and ideas out in the open. – Joaquin Amaya, Employment Law Project
A case can be significant even without broad political support. The best example is perhaps the Filartiga case, making it possible for human rights violators outside the United States to be prosecuted here. – Peter Weiss, Center for Constitutional Rights
We can’t minimize the importance of ratification and getting laws on the books. These can be used to great effect in our organizing. – Bill Ayres, World Hunger Year
From needs to rights
There is a troika of rights, needs and entitlements. If people are being deprived in an offensive way, we say their rights are being violated. Needs represent what people perceive as deprivation. Entitlements are decided politically and can be taken away with the next policy shift. – Peter Weiss, Center for Constitutional Rights
The NAACP Legal Defense Fund is picking up the idea of moving from civil rights to human rights. – Loretta Ross
There has been much discussion in South Africa on how to avoid the mistakes of the U.S. civil rights movement in its exclusive focus on political and civil rights. – Roger Normand
On the UN, NGOs and international conferences
The series of UN conferences is now over because the U.S. government has called an end to them. We should demand that they go forward. – Jim Paul, FIDH & Global Policy Forum
We must continue to use the UN to advance our work. International conferences have provided a much-needed connection between popular movements and states. The women’s caucus has shown us how to be effective at the UN. – Peter Mann, World Hunger Year
Sometimes the documents that result from international conferences represent a step backwards. Most of the progressive language we fought for at the Social Development Summit, for example, is already contained in the major human rights agreements. – David Freedman, International Labour Organisation
Globalization, trade and the social clause
We are optimistic about recent concerted action on the social clause that has pushed for strong penalties when governments violate the 5 core ILO conventions in trade agreements. Those who take this approach are often wrongly accused of protectionism. -- Sidney Jones, Human Rights Watch/Asia
Globalization cannot be left to its own devices. Low wages shouldn’t be put forward as "comparative advantage," unless development occurs as a result. – David Freedman, International Labour Organisation
The promotion of economic and social rights requires growth. – Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, Human Development Report
The promotion of economic and social rights requires growth in the South, but not in the North. – Peter Mann, World Hunger Year
In conclusion
When asked whether she thought things were getting better or worse, Grace Paley replied: "Well, they’re getting worse. But underneath, they’re getting better!" – Peter Weiss, Center for Constitutional Rights
