Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

JJ:       Hello, I’m Jennifer Johnson and I’m the Communications Manager at the Scottish Human Rights Commission.  Today, we’re going to be talking about economic, social and cultural rights and why they are essential.  Duncan Wilson, the Head of Legal and Strategy at the Commission, says that they are indivisible from other rights.

DW:    Economic, social and cultural rights is a broad category of rights.  It includes the right to education, the right to adequate housing, the right to water and sanitation, the right to the highest attainable standard of health care and many others.  From its inception, International Human Rights Law has recognised both civil and political rights and economic, social and cultural rights.  Following the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948, the political dynamics at the time, the Cold War and other developments meant that there wasn’t the political will to adopt one binding Human Rights Treaty at the international level which would cover all of those rights and so these categories of rights were differentiated and enshrined in two separate International Human Rights Treaties.  Today, economic, social and cultural rights are having a resurgence.  Newly independent and newly democratic states across the world are enshrining them in their constitutions.  They are being given new life in laws and they are being given new attention by civil society activists as well as by National Human Rights Institutions across the world.  It’s not hugely helpful to look at distinguishing these rights because in practice, as the international community has recognised, all Human Rights are indivisible, interdependent and the right to education is a classic example of a right that has civil and political dimensions.  The right of people to establish schools according to their religious and philosophical convictions as well as economic, social and cultural rights dimensions.  Cultural rights would include minority language rights in education.  Social rights would include education to advance social cohesion, for example and economic rights, there’s a clear link between ensuring that education is of benefit, to enable you to earn a living as well.  So the distinctions between these categories of rights and between civil and political and economic, social and cultural rights are actually increasingly unhelpful.

JJ:       People will try to argue though that economic, social and cultural rights are not truly of the same stature or legal standing as others.  Duncan says that they are fully legally enforceable and are essential to Human Dignity.

DW:    Are these legal rights?  Are they able to be legally protected?  The answer is very clearly yes.  The European Court of Human Rights which looks at the European Convention of Human Rights, civil and political rights instrument, has said very clearly, there’s no water tight distinction between these and economic, social and cultural rights.  A number of their decisions have looked at economic, social and cultural rights.  Under the right to protection of the home, they’ve looked at housing rights questions.  Under the right to life, they’ve looked at right to health issues and so on.  A number of courts at the national level have also gone very far.  The Supreme Court of India has developed an extensive interpretation of the right to life to extend to a right to live with dignity and just one of their cases gives a sense of what they’ve done.  A series of cases were brought, which are called collectively, Starvation Death cases, and they involved the collection of grain in grain warehouses, that the authorities kept for effectively a rainy day, and when there was starvation, they didn’t distribute the grain and the Supreme Court said very clearly that, that violation of the right to adequate food was in fact a violation of the right to life and demanded that the state distribute the grain to ensure prevention of starvation.  Another argument that’s made about economic, social and cultural rights is that they’re really just fuzzy development ideals but the International Human Rights instruments which protect economic, social and cultural rights to which the United Kingdom is party make very clear that states, including the UK have a series of very clear duties.  The primary one of those is to ensure progressive realisation of these rights, according to the maximum of available resources.  That is they need to do that in a way that’s reasonable by prioritising the most marginalised, by ensuring non-discrimination and by prioritising core elements of these rights, such as ensuring that everyone has minimum essential levels of water, housing, healthcare, etcetera.

JJ:       One example of the enforcement of these rights can be found right on the Commissions doorstep.  Duncan says that the Scottish Parliament’s Homelessness Act is an internationally admired example of exactly what can be achieved by governments who enshrine economic, social and cultural rights. 

DW:    The Homelessness Scotland Act is an example where the Scottish Parliament has adopted legislation which actually looks at progressively realising the right to housing by setting a time limit of 2012 where there will be in effect a legally enforceable right to housing in Scotland.  Aside from that, one of the main projects that the Scottish Human Rights Commission is going to undertake over the next years is a mapping of the realisation of all rights across Scotland to identify gaps and good practices.  Taking an approach which looks at all Human Rights, including economic, social and cultural rights, allows people in their communities as well as across the country to monitor realisation over time.  They can use the Human Rights framework as communities have done elsewhere, including in Belfast, to hold to account their authorities, whether they’re local authorities or national for effectively delivering on their human rights and prioritising those elements that they feel are most important to them.