ECONOMIC RIGHTS

Poverty can have a severely negative impact on a child’s development. Their health and education can suffer, as can their ability to fulfill their potential and participate in society, both when they are children and as they grow into adulthood. And it’s not only poverty in the developing world that’s a concern - extreme poverty affects individuals in even the richest countries, and social divisions between "haves" and "have nots" can erode communities.

Freedom from poverty is not explicitly recognised as a human right in any international human rights treaty. However, the right to an adequate standard of living (which includes housing and food), to health, education and freedom from discrimination, are core principles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural rights (ICESCR).

Specific issues around child poverty include the right to survival and development, right to health, right to education, protection from child labour (including fair pay where a child is working in a healthy environment) and other forms of exploitation created by situations of poverty.

Any action to end child poverty should look at the structures that create poverty. They should also go hand in hand with an action to realise children's rights, including their civil and political rights, so they can say what they think about government policies and budget allocation.

To understand the importance of a rights-based approach in economics, read CRIN's submission to the OHCHR's report on a better investment in children which reviews the impact of decisions about government spending on particular children's rights, and mechanisms to guarantee these.

Relevant articles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) dealing with economic rights:

·         Social security (article 26): The child has the right to benefit from social security including social insurance.

·         Standard of living (article 27): Every child has the right to a standard of living adequate for his or her physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development. Parents have the primary responsibility to ensure that the child has an adequate standard of living. The State's duty is to ensure that this responsibility can be fulfilled, and is. State responsibility can include material assistance to parents and their children.

·         Child labour (article 32): The child has the right to be protected from work that threatens his or her health, education or development. The State shall set minimum ages for employment and regulate working conditions.

By definition, human rights are universal and describe those rights related to human dignity. Thus, the universal obligation to adhere to these rights arguably binds the government to be proactive in its action or inaction toward fostering human dignity. While international human rights law emboldens the fiduciary responsibilities of national governments to protect the human rights of their residents, the universality of human rights also engenders a broad interpretation of how they can be observed. This interpretation is, at times, subjectively operationalized.

Human rights scholars recognize five broad categories of rights—civil, political, social, economic, and cultural—outlined in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but rarely practiced in their totality. More specifically, social rights often deal with the allocation and distribution of resources, a power generally reserved for the legislature. They are regarded as “second-generation” rights protected by the government to ensure the fulfillment of basic needs like sustenance, housing, education, health, and employment. Social rights are primarily private rights requiring government intervention and sacrifice, rather than a negative right that implicates government inaction. This contrasts “first-generation” civil-political rights, which largely limit government interference, and which many claim are compromised at the expense of socioeconomic rights.

Today, economic rights are not deemed officially “justiciable,” meaning there remains significant controversy surrounding whether or not independent judiciaries should remedy a violation of the right through deeming government action or inaction unconstitutional and, to a certain extent, demanding legislative or executive response.

The obligations imposed by economic rights work must be approached in the same way as they are with respect to civil and political rights. These include providing freedoms, imposing obligations on the state regarding third parties, and imposing obligations on the state to adopt measures or to achieve a particular result (International Commission of Jurists, 2008). The enforcement of economic rights is instrumental to the amelioration of the ubiquitous and damaging economic crises domestically and abroad.

"Constitutionalizing economic rights can begin to ameliorate the gaping issues of hunger, unemployment, and poverty."

Economic Justice to Combat Economic Strife

Constitutionalizing economic rights can begin to ameliorate the gaping issues of hunger, unemployment, and poverty that disproportionately affect low-income and minority communities in the United States and abroad.

The United States, despite being among the world’s wealthiest and most resource and technology-heavy states, remains the only developed country where millions go hungry (“The State of Hunger in 2009,” Human Rights, 2009). Rates of poverty remain just as demoralizing. There are 39.7 million people living in poverty in the United States, including 12.8 million children (U.S. Census Bureau, 2018). Eighty-six percent of jobs in the food system offer very low wages at or below the poverty level, a steadfastly rising standard (Food Chain Workers Alliance and Solidarity Research Cooperative, 2016). Higher rates of poverty are also intimately connected with unemployment rates. Widespread and lingering unemployment yields dire consequences for both the national economy and the unemployed demographics; the former is fiscally stunted, while the latter may experience emotional and psychological destruction.

The tradition of regarding economic rights as second-class is deceptive, especially considering the fundamental nature of these rights. America has embraced and adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states, under Article 25, that there is a “right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being” of each person and their family, including basic food, medical care, social services, and security in the event of unemployment or disability. It is these human rights that offer a means of articulating and fulfilling basic human needs. These needs are encompassed by the protections provided by economic rights.

It follows, then, that the judicial protection of human rights is crucial. A right without a remedy raises questions of whether it is in fact a right at all. This is not to say that judicial enforcement is the only, or even the best, way of protecting economic, social, and cultural rights. However, judicial enforcement has a clear role in developing our understanding of these rights, in remedying clear violations, and in providing decisions on test cases that can lead to systematic institutional change and prevent future rights violations.