On Rights Day: Yes to Social & Economic Rights!

Happy Human Rights Day, everyone!
On this day 60 years ago the UN General Assembly, meeting in Paris, adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That was a signal development. However, the language of the UDHR was kept fairly general and proclamatory. The actual content of the universal rights it proclaimed was spelled out in two subsequent documents, the International Covenants on, respectively, (1) Civil and Political Rights, and (2), Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.
The United States, to our country’s great shame, has never ratified the Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). When Jimmy Carter was president, in 1977, the US did at least sign it. But for the US to become a full party, that signature needs to be ratified by the Senate. By contrast, the US is a longstanding party to the covenant on civil and political rights.
The ICESCR spells out the universal right of all persons to such essential inputs for human wellbeing as a right to work, and the rights to housing, health care, education, and self-determination.
Given the threatening economic prospects that so many US citizens face today, it is more urgent than ever that we raise the demand that our country join the 159 states around the world that are full members of the ICESCR. You can see a map of them at the top of the page here. You can see the full listing of signatories and States Parties (right column), here.
What it would take for our country to become a full member of the ICESCR is that the US Senate should ratify the treaty.
Joining would have a number of clear advantages:

1. First and foremost, it would establish the responsibility of our legislators to establish a social order at home that ensures the protection of the listed rights. Just as all of us in the western human-rights movement hold responsible the governments of poorer, more vulnerable countries when they fail to assure the protection of their citizens’ recognized human rights, so too– and far, far more so!– should we hold our own government similarly accountable.
Recognized economic and social rights include the right of everyone in the world to:
Article 12: “[T]he enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.”
Art. 7: A living wage, and “Safe and healthy working conditions.”
Art. 9: “[S]ocial security, including social insurance.”

2. Joining the ICESCR would also enable us to collaborate on an equal footing with rights activists everywhere else in the world as we all work together to try to make these very basic rights truly “universal”– for Americans and for non-Americans. Until now, US government officials and far too many US-based NGOs have been quite happy to go around the world and “preach” to other governments elsewhere about the need to protect civil and political rights. But these Americans have had far less to say about the need to protect economic, social, and cultural rights. And all this preaching about civil and political rights has been far less effective than it can become once we can present ourselves to people in other countries as a nation that truly works for the full spectrum of the rights derived from the Universal Declaration.
3. Joining would also remind Americans that human rights– in our country as in all others around the world– really do come in a single package. There is no way that people in any country can really exercise the kinds of rights listed in the covenant on civil and political rights if they don’t have enough to eat, don’t have adequate shelter, literacy, or access to phone lines, etc.

Even though I’ve been a citizen of the US for 20 years now, I am still shocked that this country stands outside the ICESCR. As I understand it, the resistance many Americans have to the covenant is based partly on the strong belief many Americans hold to that “everyone” should be able to pull him- or herself up by his own bootstraps (American individualism), and partly on the idea that if, in some very occasional circumstances, an individual might need some temporary help, then this help is most appropriately provided by churches or other non-governmental entities, rather than by governments (American anti-governmentalism.)
Well. At a time when the government has just very generously been bailing out the CEO of AIG, his colleagues and shareholders, and hundreds of other wealthy bankers and investors, I think we can put the lie to the arguments of anti-governmentalism! Either that, or cut the bankers off completely and let them go join the rapidly lengthening lines at the soup kitchens in towns and cities around the country.
As for the myths of American individualism, they have nearly all been crafted and sustained for nigh these 232 years now by people (mainly men) who have never had any direct responsibility for the care of newborns, young children, frail elders, or people with handicaps. If they had had such responsibilities, few of them would ever have been able to subscribe to the brutal and brutalizing “booststraps” myth.
There are two main organizations working here in the US to win ratification of the ICESCR and US adherence to its provisions. They are the National Economic and Social Rights Intitiative and the Center for Economic and Social Rights (which has numerous programs aimed at other governments, too.)
Maybe to celebrate Rights Day, all of us who are US citizens should make contributions to these organizations or others like them.
At the very least, let’s all go and re-read, with due care and attention, the text of the ICESCR, so we can deepen our appreciation of just how powerful it can be for us as an organizing tool.