STATEMENT TO THE COMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL RIGHTS by Bertrand G. Ramcharan, Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights

CESCR
25th session
Monday, 23rd April 2001




Madame Chairman, distinguished members of the Committee, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen:

The High Commissioner for Human Rights is today in New York to participate in the Security Council. On her behalf, I welcome you at the opening of this, your twenty-fifth session and wish you every success in your deliberations. I should also like to thank you and the other representatives and experts assembled here, including from the non-governmental organizations, for your devotion to, and persistence in, the implementation of economic, social and cultural rights.

It is one of the great achievements of the United Nations that, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it pulled together strands from different national experiences to spell out a concept of human rights that embraces civil and political rights with economic, social and cultural rights in a relationship of interdependence and indivisibility. One can find the strands of economic, social and cultural rights in the revolutionary movements that gave us the great declarations of human rights. In the middle of internal conflicts, the French Revolution adopted a Declaration in 1793 which contained social rights now enshrined in international standards. The philosopher, John Locke, argued that one may take from the state of nature that which one needs for oneself provided that one leaves also for ones fellow citizens. In Common Sense, Tom Paine, the pamphleteer of the American Revolution, argued for what are now termed civil and political rights as well as economic, social and cultural rights.

The drafters of the Universal Declaration from different parts of the world were moved by a conviction that in order for human beings to develop and flourish in freedom, economic, social and cultural rights must be protected alongside civil and political rights. The Four Freedoms of President Roosevelt were very much on their minds. Indeed, the case was made poignantly and elegantly at the very closing session of the San Francisco Conference, where the United Nations Charter was born. Mrs Eleanor Roosevelt, the first Chairperson of the Commission on Human Rights, has recorded in her writings how she led the cause for the vindication of economic, social and cultural rights in the Universal Declaration.


Today, at the start of a new century, the implementation of economic, social and cultural rights is a matter of decency, of principle, and of strategy. Let me take each of these in turn: It must be right, as a matter of decency, that special efforts be taken to provide adequate food for every person on the planet. Senator George Mc Govern, in a newly published book, the Third Freedom, argues for a universal free lunch programme for every child. He also argues for special protection for mothers and infants. Independently, the Commission on Human Rights' Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food has also advanced similar ideas. As a matter of principle, it is crucial that the plight of the poor be addressed - nationally, regionally and internationally. It is worth mentioning in this context that none of the human rights treaties, not even the Declaration on the Right to Development, makes explicit reference to "poverty" as a term. As a result, poverty has been too little defined in human rights terms - except, obliquely, by reference to the right to an adequate standard of living. From the strategic standpoint also, the implementation of economic, social and cultural rights is fundamental Put simply, can one expect human rights to triumph universally in a world of growing poverty? Surely not.

At the same time, let us be clear about one point: without democracy, the rule of law and the implementation of civil and political rights, it is hardly realistic to expect the realization of economic, social and cultural rights. Growth and prosperity bloom in conditions of respect for the rule of law and of civil and political rights. The implementation of all human rights should therefore proceed in tandem.

This brings me to the implementation of human rights treaties generally. Historically, the international community has placed emphasis on the elaboration of norms, their legal acceptance nationally, dialogue and cooperation, reporting, petitions and complaints procedures, international cooperation, technical assistance, and activities of promotion and protection generally. This is a process that had been pioneered by the International Labour Organization. Over the past half-century, the United Nations and treaty bodies such as this Committee have faithfully tried these methods.

However, the deliberations of the General Assembly, the Commission on Human Rights, the treaty bodies themselves, and the works of experts and scholars have given rise to a growing concern that the approaches and methods applied to date may not be delivering the results intended. An independent study prepared by Professor Bayefsky, which has been made available to all members of treaty bodies, is the latest work that offers a variety of recommendations for improving the effectiveness of treaty bodies. It would be important for this Committee, given the strategic role of economic, social and cultural rights, to ponder carefully the results of these different reflections about the effectiveness of treaty bodies and to take such corrective steps as might be needed. Business as usual would not be enough in the future.

The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, as each of you knows well, requires States Parties to take immediately such measures as they can to give effect to the rights in the Covenant. The Covenant spells out obligations of immediate application. What is progressive is the duty to strive for the full realization of the rights in the Covenant. The obligation to take measures against discrimination in the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights is of immediate application. There is no justification for delay here. The Covenant requires a State Party to deploy its best endeavours nationally and, in the event of need, to reach out to the international community for international cooperation marshalled by the Economic and Social Council.

When the Covenant came into force and the Economic and Social Council laid out the initial implementation arrangements, this was the blueprint it had in mind. Unfortunately, as is well known, the Sessional Working Group of the ECOSOC established to consider reports did not make much headway. This Committee was thereafter established to succeed it and it has sought to make headway with reporting, with the development of general comments, by promoting benchmarks, by interacting with other agencies, by advocating an Optional Protocol providing for individual petitions.

Some hard questions need to be addressed still: What evidence is there of the effect of the reporting process nationally? To what extent can it be said that the general comments are penetrating countries and organizations? To what extent have benchmarks been developed and used? What evidence is there that interaction with agencies has led to the pursuit of concrete strategies for the implementation of economic, social and cultural rights? And how should one weigh the quest for individual petitions in light of the answer to these questions?

It surely must be appropriate to ask deeply probing questions about how one has gone about business in the past and where one is headed in the future. In this spirit, allow me to offer the following thoughts which I would like to share with you:

A. Impact on National Strategies for the Implementation of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: Based on a quarter century of experience, is it not timely that the Committee should assess the extent to which it can be said that there are national strategies for the implementation of economic, social and cultural rights as rights and what impact the Covenant has had on such strategies? Surely the key to the application of the Covenant is the extent to which it contributes to national strategies for the implementation of economic, social and cultural rights.

B. Non-discrimination in the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights: Has the Committee ever sought to measure the extent to which the obligation to prevent discrimination in the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights is being carried out in practice? Is it not fundamental to ascertain and act against discrimination in access to food, health services, education and shelter?

C. Impact on International Development Policies and Strategies: Is it not appropriate that one should seek to assess the extent to which international development and financial agencies, as well as efforts for peace-building, are integrating the Covenant on a day to day basis? Is it at all conceivable to have a strategy of integrating human rights in development without basing and anchoring it in the economic and social covenant?

D. Regional and Sub-Regional Cooperation: To what extent can it be said that regional and sub-regional organizations, particularly those in the economic and development sectors, are aware of and seeking to foster implementation of the covenant on economic, social and cultural rights?

E. International Cooperation, particularly the role of ECOSOC: For a quarter of a century the ECOSOC has been vested with watching over the implementation of the Covenant. What can one say has been the policies of the ECOSOC regarding the Covenant and to what extent can it be said that the ECOSOC is demonstrating awareness of it in its efforts to promote development and international economic cooperation?

F. The Role of Civil Society and NGOs: What has been and should be the role of Civil Society and NGOs in the implementation of economic, social and cultural rights? How can partnerships be intensified and extended here?

G. Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and Emerging Security Concepts: What evidence is there that economic, social and cultural rights are influencing emerging security concepts?

H. The Economic and Social Covenant and international policy conferences: How is the Covenant influencing the deliberations of the major international conferences such as the forthcoming Conference on Least Developed Countries? Let me, in this regard, welcome the letter that you, Madame Chair, have written to the Chair of the Preparatory Committee for the Conference identifying the links between implementation of the provisions of the Covenant and poverty eradication as a means to development.

I. The Covenant and the Emerging Global Architecture: What should be the place of the Covenant in the evolving global architecture in a rapidly changing and globalising world?

J. The Covenant and particular population groups: What is the relevance of the Covenant to children, women, minorities, migrants, indigenous populations?

K. Best Practices: How can one contribute to the assembling and dissemination of good practices in the implementation of economic, social and cultural rights?

L. Case Law: How can one contribute to the collection of national, regional and international case-law on the implementation of economic, social and cultural rights?

M. Consistent Pattern of gross violations of economic, social and cultural rights: How can one contribute to developments of international responses to situations involving a consistent pattern of gross violations of economic, social and cultural rights?

N. The Covenant and Humanitarian Emergencies: Recently, the FAO warned that nearly thirty million people face food shortages in Sub-Saharan Africa. Isn't there a role for the Covenant in such situations? The rights-based approach would suggest so.

O. Evolution of the Reporting System: How might the reporting system evolve in light of the answers to the preceding questions?
At the end of a discussion of the idea of Justice, which he considers the highest principle, the American philosopher and author, Mortimer Adler, concluded:

AIn the sphere of political institutions, the most just form of government is a republic with universal suffrage and with a Constitution that includes a bill of economic as well as political rights that secures the natural rights of all. The supreme justice of a constitutional democracy resides in its distribution of political liberty and political equality to all, with the exception of infants and the pathologically disabled, as well as in the protection of other natural rights.

"In the sphere of economic arrangements, the most just economy is the one that provides all individuals and families with equal participation in the general economic welfare at least to the extent that all have, on the base line, the degree of wealth needed for a decent human life. No one is left destitute by being deprived of that minimal sufficiency. Above the base line, additional justice is done by a distribution of wealth that is fair because it gives some haves more and some haves less in proportion to the contribution they make to the production of wealth."

It is with this thought that I should like to end these remarks today.


* *** *