The Right to Food, Obesity and Food Systems

(My thanks to IntLawGrrls for the opportunity to contribute this introductory post)

On Tuesday, the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De Schutter, presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council a groundbreaking report in which he uses the right to food to address issues of obesity and non-communicable diseases. Traditionally, the focus of the right to food's adequacy dimension has been on hunger and malnutrition, and this has been applied to programming and advocacy to address famines, to increase agricultural productivity, and to dispute agricultural trade agreements.
In his March 6, 2012 report, De Schutter unveils what he describes as the “triple challenge.” He identifies three problems caused by current food systems: (1) food systems are directed only at increasing agricultural productivity but not sustainability; (2) inadequate diets cause undernutrition and micronutrient deficiency; and (3) inadequate diets cause obesity and non-communicable disease. In this report, De Schutter links these three challenges to the adequacy element of the right to food and calls for a massive reform of the current food system to address them.International law recognizes the right to food in several instruments.
The right to food was first articulated in Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which states that:

[e]veryone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food …

The International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) reiterates this right in Article 11, which also recognizes the right of everyone to be free from hunger.
In General Comment 12, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR)defines the elements of the right to food as availability, accessibility, and adequacy. Adequate food means food in quality and quantity that is (1) sufficient to satisfy dietary needs, (b) both consumer and culturally acceptable, and (3) available both for present and future generations. Therefore, the adequacy dimension of the right to food incorporates issues of food production sustainability as well as dietary considerations.

Vermont health campaign success

(Delighted to welcome back alumna Mariah McGill, who contributes this guest post)

More than 2,000 Vermonters gathered in Montpelier for a march and rally Sunday at the Statehouse. The May 1st rally was the third annual rally organized by the Healthcare is a Human Right Campaign of the Vermont Workers' Center. (photos by Mariah McGill)
The purposes of the rally were to:
► Demand that Vermont enact legislation that will provide universal health care for all Vermonters as a basic human right; and
► Celebrate the historic health care reform legislation that recently passed in Vermont's House and Senate.
The Center launched the health care campaign in 2008 to call attention to the health care crisis facing the state and to demand health care as a human right for all. Rather than focusing on a particular form of universal healthcare, the Center made human rights principles -- universality, equity, accountability, transparency, and participation -- the core of its campaign. Specifically, it asserted that everyone is entitled to quality health care; that the health care system must be accessible to all and without any systemic barriers; that the costs of financing the system must be shared fairly; and that the system must be efficient, transparent in design and accountable to the people it serves.
The human rights principles at the heart of the campaign are derived from international law. Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights declares that all people have the right to the highest attainable standard of health. The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights that is empowered to monitor implementation of the Convention has interpreted the right to health to require the principles advanced by the campaign.
By framing healthcare as a human right, the Center has been able to mobilize thousands of Vermonters, many of whom have not previously been involved in political campaigns, to demand universal healthcare. This grassroots movement successfully pressured the state legislature into passing significant health care reform legislation in 2010 and 2011.
In 2010, the Vermont Legislature passed Act 128, which set the stage for universal health care by establishing a commission charged with hiring an independent consultant to design three universal health care models. The Act declared that health care was a public good, and incorporated the human rights principles.
In January 2011, as posted earlier, Dr. William Hsiao, the independent consultant hired by Vermont, presented three models to the legislature. He recommended that the state adopt a system of single-payer health care. Under this kind of system, (of which Medicare is an example) universal health care is financed by the public and administered by the government or a government sponsored entity who pays all claims.
Hsiao’s recommendations were incorporated into health care reform legislation which was passed this spring. The legislation creates a framework for developing Green Mountain Care, a universal single-payer health care system. The final version of Vermont's health care reform bill has cleared the House and Senate and has been presented to Governor Peter Shumlin for his signature. Because the governor has staunchly supported this legislation, it is extremely likely that Vermont will be the first state to begin implementing a single-payer health care system.
Both the House and the Senate versions incorporate the human rights principles. The legislation requires the state to ensure universal access for all Vermonters and ensure that systemic barriers do not prevent anyone from receiving the health care they need. In addition, the legislation must be transparent in design and operation; accountable to the people it serves and ensure public participation in the design, implementation, evaluation and accountability mechanisms of the health care system.
Overall, representatives of the Vermont Workers’ Center are pleased with the passage of the health care reform legislation, but they have expressed a few concerns:
► First, the Vermont Workers’ Center is concerned that the bill is more focuses more on containing costs, than on providing health care as a basic human right for all Vermonters.
► Further, the legislation refers to the human rights principles, but does not explain how these principles will be achieved.
► In addition, many of the hardest decisions regarding the benefits package, financing system and provider reimbursement rates have been put off for the future. This delay may make it easier for interests opposed to a universal single-payer health care system to weaken reform. For example, the legislation was watered down in the Vermont Senate due to the influence of business and insurance lobbyists opposed to a universal, single-payer health care system.
The current legislation is not perfect, but it is, nonetheless, a major achievement.
Rather than being content to celebrate the historic health care legislation that has passed, however, organizers and volunteers continue to try to make it better. On Monday, for example, they persuaded legislators to drop an amendment that excluded undocumented immigrants from Green Mountain Care.
As Peg Franzen, President of the Vermont Workers' Center, stated on Sunday,

'Every victory is a success and a call to action.'

The momentum for universal health care continues to grow as Vermonters heed this call to demand health care as a basic human right.

Vermont reform & the human right to health

(My thanks to IntLawGrrls for the opportunity to contribute this guest post)

The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights recognizes many human rights that are not typically recognized in the United States, such as the right to health, the right to housing and the right to work. Although President Jimmy Carter signed the Covenant in 1977, the United States Senate has not yet ratified it, nor does it look likely to do so in the near future. Nonetheless, activists are using the human rights principles recognized in the Covenant in advocacy campaigns across the country. The Vermont Workers’ Center’s “Healthcare is a Human Right Campaign” is one powerful example of using international human rights principles in domestic advocacy.
The Center launched this healthcare campaign in 2008. Rather than focusing on a particular form of universal healthcare, the Center promotes the idea of healthcare as a human right and makes human rights principles - universality, equity, accountability, transparency and participation - the core of their campaign. Specifically, the Campaign asserts that everyone is entitled to quality health care; that the health care system must be accessible to all and without any systemic barriers; that the costs of financing the system must be shared fairly; and that the system must be efficient, transparent in design and accountable to the people it serves. By framing healthcare as a human right, the Center has been able to mobilize thousands of Vermonters, many of whom have not previously been involved in political campaigns, to demand universal healthcare. This strong grassroots movement was able to successfully pressure the Vermont Legislature into passing healthcare legislation in May 2010.
The 2010 legislation declares healthcare to be a “public good” for all Vermonters. In addition, the legislation incorporates the human rights principles at the center of the Campaign, explicitly stating that any healthcare system in Vermont must be universal, transparent, efficient and accountable to the people it serves and that Vermont must ensure that the public has opportunities to participate in the design, implementation and accountability mechanisms of any new system.
The legislation also establishes a healthcare commission tasked with hiring an independent consultant to design three universal healthcare options. The first model is to be a traditional single-payer system while the second plan would create a public option to compete alongside private insurers. The third plan was left to the discretion of the independent consultant. Dr. William Hsiao of Harvard was hired to lead a team charged with designing the three healthcare models, which he presented to the Vermont Legislature on January 19, 2011.
The first model is a government-run single payer system with one insurance fund and a uniform benefit package to be financed through employer and employee payroll contributions. Dr. Hsiao’s team created two distinct benefit packages under the first option. One option creates a comprehensive benefits package, while the other creates an essential benefits package. Both single-payer options would achieve universal health insurance coverage for all Vermont residents with a uniform benefits package. In addition, both options would produce significant savings in contrast to the current system or any system achieved under the federal healthcare legislation, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).
The second model involves a “public option” run by a governmental or quasi-governmental body to compete directly with private insurers on the health insurance exchanges. According to Dr. Hsiao, a public option would result in slightly more Vermonters having insurance coverage and it would slightly decrease healthcare costs. However, it would not effectively control spiraling healthcare costs and would still leave significant numbers of Vermonters uninsured or underinsured.
The final model proposed by Dr. Hsiao’s team is a “public/private single-payer system.” According to Dr. Hsiao, this model is the most viable model for Vermont. The primary difference between this model and the single-payer model discussed previously is that instead of being administered by a government entity, the single-payer entity is governed by an independent board representing all the major players including employers, state government and consumers. To determine who is responsible for administering claims under the new system, the Independent Board allows all interested parties to participate in a competitive bidding process.
Dr. Hsiao’s presentation to the Legislature kicked off a 15-day public comment period on the draft report. The final report was provided to the Legislature and Governor Peter Shumlin on February 17, 2011. On February 8, Governor Shumlin introduced legislation for a single payer healthcare system. The healthcare legislation incorporates the human rights principles contained in Act 128.
The achievement of universal healthcare in Vermont is not yet certain. Dr. Hsiao identified significant legal and federal constraints including ERISA and the PPACA. For example, the PPACA requires every state to establish health care exchanges by 2014. Although states may seek waivers to establish alternative systems beginning in 2017, under the current law, Vermont would have to establish a healthcare exchange by 2014 only to replace it with a single-payer system in 2017. To address this concern, on January 17, Vermont Senators Bernie Sanders and Pat Leahy and Representative Peter Welch announced their plans to introduce federal legislation to allow states to apply for a waiver beginning in 2014.
Another major obstacle to healthcare reform in Vermont is the special interest groups that profit from the current system. The Vermont Workers’ Center and other healthcare advocacy groups are bracing for an intense battle in the current legislative session once the Vermont Legislature takes up Dr. Hsiao’s proposals.
To counteract the power of corporate money and lobbying, the Workers’ Center activists and others continue to build grassroots support for universal healthcare. On March 7, the Center will host healthcare hearings at fifteen locations throughout Vermont that will give ordinary Vermonters the opportunity to meet with their legislators and express their support for universal healthcare. The Center has also released a public service announcement entitled “Stand Up Against Insurance Profiteering” which reminds Vermonters that healthcare is a basic human right for all.

A "New Deal" for Human Rights in the Global Economy

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
--Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Art. 25(1)

Times of great crisis also represent moments of opportunity and innovation. They can signal significant paradigm shifts. That’s the best that can be said about the worsening world economic crisis at the moment.
The old neo-liberal Washington Consensus, financial and banking deregulation, and dependence on our unbridled individual and collective consumerism, have been abject failures in providing an adequate standard of living for the vast majority of the world’s peoples. The situation requires alternative approaches to global and local economic policies.
The Human Rights Implications
The global economic crisis may well exacerbate violations of civil and political rights. Massive poverty and socio-economic dislocation, and competition over scarce resources historically served as a trigger for violent conflict, discrimination and scape-goating of racial or ethnic minorities, and government crack-downs on civil liberties as social unrest rises.
But the current crisis, and the neglect of socio-economic justice that preceded it, already have had devastating economic and social human rights effects. The problems are well-known: malnutrition and lack of access to affordable food and clean water, homelessness, lack of access to primary health care, and educational inequality. Such human rights violations are all associated with the poverty, land insecurity, and unemployment that are spreading throughout even “developed” countries. (Photo: UN Independent Expert on Human Rights and Extreme Poverty, Magdalena Sepulveda.)
The accepted wisdom has been thrown open to challenge. It is time for new ideas, as well as renewed urgency in efforts to generate the political will necessary to put some “old” good ideas into practice.
Among those ideas and priorities are
►sustainable development that includes human development (see, for example, the Millennium Development Goals);
►the interdependence of civil and political rights and economic, social, and cultural rights; and
►the need for mandatory and voluntary mechanisms to ensure the responsibility and accountability of private business and financial enterprises.
Sustainability and a “Green New Deal”
In a speech at the gloomy (previously opulent and celebratory) World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this week, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for what might be one such new-old approach. He advocated for a “Green New Deal” that would attempt to address the “truly existential crisis” of global climate change through international, governmental, and private sector strategies. Positive action on climate change, he hopes, would also stimulate the world economy and slow the global recession.
Domestic and Global Observance of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights
Some African and European leaders reminded increasingly inward-looking representatives from the Global North that it is the poor in both North and South who will suffer the worst effects of economic and environmental crises.
If we’ve learned nothing else in recent years, we should now know that seemingly far-away poverty, political and social oppression, health crises, and environmental devastation, can be directly linked in cause or impact to the backyards and kitchen tables of the Global North. The negative effects of poverty, labor abuses, environmental toxins, and insufficient public health services have a way of crossing borders.
Attention to international co-operation in economic and social development is, therefore, not only a matter of international human rights law, it is also a moral commitment and a matter of domestic national security interest for many nations.
Similarly, government obligations to respect, protect, and fulfill international economic and social human rights cannot simply be abandoned in times of economic difficulty.
The International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, for example, requires even the poorest states parties to take steps to fulfill their obligations “to the maximum of available resources” (Art. 2(2)). The UN Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (CESCR) issued instructive interpretive guidelines with regard to non-discrimination and minimum core obligations for states hoping to protect rights while managing economic challenges. (See, e.g., General Comment No. 3 on “The Nature of State Obligations” and the influential Maastricht Guidelines on Violations of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights).
►Non-discrimination: A fundamental human right under all major international treaties, the prohibition on discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, national origin, class, or other status can and should be implemented immediately even by poor states or states in economic crisis.
Any stimulus packages, therefore, should not, in intention or effect, discriminate on such prohibited bases. For example, if massive infusions will be spent on bringing physical infrastructure up to code or improving it, will the jobs created in construction and engineering include racial, ethnic, and religious minorities and women? To the extent that they have been previously excluded from those jobs, attention must be paid to targeted “special measures” such as recruitment and training.
►Minimum Core Obligations: Fundamental human rights necessary for an adequate standard of living include the right to food (and water), housing, education, the supports necessary for physical and mental health, and work at a living wage and under safe conditions.
The initial reaction to the continuing call for economic and social rights in an economic crisis is to charge that they are “too expensive” or “luxuries” to be considered in a time of prosperity. Ironically, of course, very few placed priority on such rights and conditions even during times of the false prosperity and economic growth some countries previously enjoyed. Now may be the best time to pressure the global community to finally take such rights seriously.
As indicated in an earlier post (Financing Human Rights), fulfilling our legal and moral obligations does take money. Nevertheless, if there is still serious debate in the U.S. over whether the billions of dollars in bonuses paid to executives working for bailed-out financial institutions are appropriate, perhaps we can afford to seriously debate whether addressing the basic needs of billions of poor people should also be considered an economic incentive and stimulus.
International human rights law recognizes that the economic resources available to a country may be limited. However, each state can make a start by respecting, protecting, and fulfilling minimum core obligations with regard to human rights. The CESCR and leading international policymakers, development experts, and legal scholars have outlined criteria by which to elaborate such obligations and measure progress. (See, e.g., Human Rights and the Global Marketplace: Economic, Social, and Cultural Dimensions (Jeanne M. Woods & Hope Lewis, eds.).
Corporate Responsibility and Accountability
Secretary-General Ban’s “Green New Deal” speech also was directed to the private sector. Recalling former Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s “UN Global Compact,” Ban called for a “Global Compact 2.0.” The reconceptualization is supposed to integrate corporate responsibility and technological innovation to address global climate change that would also ameliorate economic recession.
In another move, a press release issued by Professor John Ruggie, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Business and Human Rights, announced a new initiative on corporate law and human rights. Leading corporate law firms agreed to work with the UN to explore “whether and how national corporate law principles and practices currently foster corporate cultures respectful of human rights.”
It remains to be seen whether business actors will step up to the plate when many seem to be desperately casting about for their own survival.
“Developing” Toward What, and For Whom?
Economists and budget analysts can and do assess the positive economic impact of investing in public health and preventive health initiatives, early childhood education, environmentally sustainable housing, living wages, and safe working conditions.
The central motive of the human rights movement, however, is the belief that these rights are core human values whether or not they are always economically efficient. Still, isn’t such a truly developed society one in which we all would wish to live?

On December 19

On this day in ...

... 1966, the 2 international covenants, intended to make obligatory and enforceable the promises made decades earlier in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, were opened for signature by the U.N. General Assembly. The International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights was the 1st to enter into force, on January 3, 1976. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights followed by a couple months, entering into force on March 23, 1976.

... 1915, Édith Gassion was born in Paris to a father who was a street acrobat and a mother who aspired to be a cabaret singer. Often she "was left in the care of her Algerian grandmother, a Kabyle woman named Aïcha"; when her father left to fight in World War I, she "was left to her own devices, and generally ran wild with other children in the neighbourhood." After the war she and her father both worked as street entertainers; eventually she "was plucked off the streets, thrown into a chic little black dress and made resident singer of Le Gerny's, one of the most elegant cabarets on the Champs Elysées." Adopting a stage surname that means "sparrow," Édith Piaf went on to become one of France's most famous singers. During World War II she used her entertainers' access to Occupation officers in order to aided the French Resistance. In this video clip, she expresses her nonregrets in one of her signature songs, Non, je ne regrette rien:

Financing Human Rights in a Global Crisis

It’s been a busy and challenging Human Rights Week for IntLawGrrls. December 9 marked the 60^th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (see Diane Marie Amann's post here) and December 10 marked the 60^th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (see a post on the history of its drafting and adoption by Stephanie Farrior here and other IntLawGrrls' commentary on the UDHR here ).

In what we hope is another groundbreaking move, the UN General Assembly commemorated Human Rights Day by adopting the long-awaited Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (see Stephanie Farrior's post here).

Despite the longstanding view endorsed by the international community that all human rights, whether civil, political, economic, social, or cultural, “are universal, indivisible and interdependent and interrelated,” (Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action), economic and social rights are still dismissed or viewed with suspicion in some circles (see Human Rights & the Global Marketplace: Economic, Social, and Cultural Dimensions by Jeanne M. Woods (photo right) & Hope Lewis).

A remark recently overheard at a UDHR celebration illustrates the continuing misperceptions. The speaker dismissed ESC rights as alien to an “Anglo-American tradition.” This, despite the fact that no less American a figure than U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt called for the indivisibility of rights (freedom of speech and expression, freedom of religion and belief, freedom from want, and freedom from fear) in his famous 1941 “Four Freedoms” speech to Congress.

The various celebrations commemorated how far the international human rights movement has come, but they also shed light on how far we have to go. The standards outlined at the UN will constitute only empty promises without the political and economic commitment to back them up.
Genocide, mass killings and sexual violence, poverty, labor abuses, war, crimes against humanity, political and economic migration, human trafficking, the over-incarceration and under-education of minority youth, discrimination against indigenous peoples and racial, religious, sexual, and disability minorities and women, and environmental destruction caused by carbon emissions, unregulated mining and dumping of toxic industrial and electronic waste—all are, or are related to, continuing and massive violations of international human rights.
It is a time of global crisis, with almost every economic system and country feeling the effects. No one, including politicians, economists, and development experts, seems to have “the solution”. I don’t either (although, as a former U.S. securities regulator, I suspect that wholesale financial deregulation played an important role in the mess). (Disclaimer: The latter is solely my opinion, and does not necessarily reflect that of the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission or its staff.)
I do know this. A human rights perspective requires states, the international community, and each of us as members of society to protect fundamental human rights as a matter of priority. Some such efforts may even save some governments money, since the apparatus necessary to imprison political dissidents, torture detainees, and engage in unwise military adventures is often expensive.
Still, the protection of human rights, whether civil, political, economic, social, or cultural does require financial investment and political commitment.
Private donors, foundations, and charitable organizations do what they can to support vulnerable populations (see, for example, a recent press release on grants to 33 developing country NGOs by the Disability Rights Fund).
But governments have explicit moral, political, and legal obligations to make an investment in human rights on a much broader scale. (Note, for example, their commitment to the Millennium Development Goals and the recent International Review Conference on Financing for Development). A paradigm-shift toward human rights and human development is more likely to produce longer-term and more widely distributed benefits than failed neo-liberal paradigms have left us so far.
Like industries that are now considered “too big to fail,” individual governments and the international community simply cannot afford to consign millions to unemployment, unsafe working conditions, poverty, hunger, discrimination, and lack of access to health care.
As world leaders grapple with the global effects of financial and environmental shocks, the needs and rights of those who are most vulnerable and who will be most adversely affected must be front and center. Such an approach is not only just, compassionate, and legally-required; it’s crucial domestic and international policy.

UN adopts Optional Protocol to Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

On December 10 – International Human Rights Day – the UN General Assembly adopted by consensus an Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. A draft treaty had been approved by consensus by the UN Human Rights Council in June and by the UN General Assembly's Third Committee in November.

Adopted 42 years after a similar complaint mechanism was adopted for the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights this treaty provides for individual complaints, interim measures to avoid irreparable harm, and an inquiry procedure:

- States Parties agree that the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has competence to receive and consider communications alleging a violation of the rights in the Covenant

- communications may be submitted by -- or on behalf of -- individuals or groups of individuals claiming to be victims of a violation of the economic, social or cultural rights in the Covenant

- Pending a determination on the merits, the Committee may send the State Party a request that interim measures be taken in exceptional circumstances to avoid irreparable damage to those alleging a violation.

- Through an opt-in clause, States Parties may declare acceptance of an inquiry procedure. Under this procedure, the Committee may initiate an inquiry if it receives reliable information indicating grave or systematic violations by a State Party of the economic, social or cultural rights in the Covenant. The inquiry may include a visit to the state in question.

- States Parties are to take measures to ensure that anyone who communicates with the Committee under the Protocol is not subjected to any form of intimidation or ill treatment.

- In what I believe is a first for a human rights treaty, the clause requiring States Parties to disseminate information about the treaty widely requires that they do so “in accessible formats for persons with disabilities.”

Entry into force. The Optional Protocol requires ten ratifications to enter into force. The treaty will be open for signature at a signing ceremony in March 2009 in Geneva.

Next steps? NGOs in the coalition that has worked for many years toward development of an Optional Protocol to the Covenant are now turning their efforts to securing wide ratification. More information here.

"Human rights isn't a zero-sum game"

IntLawGrrls readers may recall last Saturday's post regarding the U.N. General Assembly speech in which Pope Benedict XVI endorsed the promotion of human rights. A key element of was the pope's support for the view that civil and political rights are indivisible from economic, social, and cultural rights.
Cross-posting of the report at Slate's Convictions drew response from my fellow blogger Eric Posner, a University of Chicago law professor whose scholarship often concerns international law. His post, entitled China, Human Rights Champion?, began:

If Diane and the pope are right that we shouldn't privilege civil and political rights over social, economic, and cultural rights, and maybe they are right, then we should give credit where credit is due, and crown China the human rights champion of the last thirty years.

It concluded:

We needn't declare a winner; but out of respect for China's achievement, we should at least let it relay its Olympic torch in peace.

FWIW, here, in full, is how I replied:

Human rights isn't a zero-sum game

Eric, nothing that the pope said Friday favored one set of rights over another. Indeed, as my post stated, his speech to the U.N. General Assembly included "a tacit reprimand to those who would privilege civil and political rights over economic, social, and cultural rights -- or vice versa." (emphasis added) The point I'd intended to underscore was that the pope had reaffirmed the indivisibility of both sets of rights, the civil/political, on the one hand, and the economic/social/cultural, on the other. Indivisibility was inherent in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but frayed when Cold War geopolitics pushed the U.N. Human Rights Commission to separate the 2 sets as it began the process of drafting treaties designed to make binding all those rights that states had endorsed in the nonbinding Declaration. That separation, which seemed essential at the height of the Cold War, may be less so today: 160 countries are full members of the 1977 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, while 157 countries are full members of the 1977 International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. That means that 3/4 of all the United Nations' member states are firmly in each Convenant's camp. Vestiges of Cold War concerns may be found, however, in the fact that the United States is not party to the latter Covenant and China is not party to the former.
As for China: application of the concept of indivisibility means that China is no more a "champion" of human rights than any other state. The role that the Chinese state has played in alleviating poverty deserves attention. Indeed, how each country addresses the basic needs of persons within its jurisdiction deserves note, as I've argued with regard to the United States in a forthcoming essay just posted at SSRN. But the costs of such programs also must be assessed, respecting matters as wide-ranging as the health problems and the repressions of civil liberties that may result from economic development at all costs. (Here, too, insert a "vice versa.")
On 2 points, it seems, we agree. 1st: Athletes honored to carry the torch a bit of the way toward the 2008 Olympics should not have to fear anger and assault as they run through the streets of their home country. 2d: Comprehensive, critical comparison of the nature and extent of states' programs to protect human rights rarely will yield a clear "winner."

Cuba signs on to the UN human rights regime

It took only a few days for Raúl Castro (right) to show the world he’s taking Cuba in a new direction: less than a week after taking office, Cuba met both Cuban and international community demands and signed both the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Fidel Castro had long opposed signing both conventions, stating in 2001 that the ICESCR "could serve as a weapon and a pretext for imperialism to try to divide and fracture the workers, create artificial unions, and decrease their political and social power and influence." Cuba’s foreign minister Felipe Pérez Roque claimed Friday that Cuba had nevertheless guaranteed the rights the agreements are designed to protect from the day Castro took power in 1959. A claim hard to square with the fact that Cuba (flag at left) is still a strictly one-party country that continues to oppose independent trade unions and limits citizens’ travel, while the ICESCR requires, among other things, that countries ensure the right form and join trade unions and the ICCPR guarantees rights to self-determination, peaceful assembly, freedom of religion, privacy, freedom to leave a country and equal protection before the law. The move to sign the documents was apparently prompted by the new Human Rights Council’s dropping Cuba from its list of countries whose rights records warranted investigation. The US opposed this decision, which indeed flies in the face of the “illegal but tolerated” opposition group Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation’s estimate that there are currently 230 political prisoners in Cuba and Amnesty International’s count of 58 prisoners of conscience or more. Human rights activists say there is still a long way to go, but Raúl Castro has recently indicated that he may allow greater freedom of speech. Signing on to the covenants is a move in the right direction.

On December 16, ...

... 1901, a daughter was born in Philadelphia to Edward and Emily Fogg Mead. An economics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, the father told his daughter, "It's a pity you aren't a boy; you'd have gone far." In 1928, the daughter published Coming of Age in Samoa; she's pictured at left during her field work. In 1929, she earned her Ph.D. from Columbia University and, as Dr. Margaret Mead, went on to become 1 of the most influential anthropologists of her century. Mead died from cancer in 1978, just a few years after serving as the 2d woman ever to lead the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
... 1966, the U.N. General Assembly adopted 2 treaties designed to make enforceable the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They were the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). The latter treaty entered into force on January 3, 1976; the former a few months later, on March 23. Though the rights that the UDHR set forth as one were divided on the premise, in part, that not all states would subscribe to both groups of rights, today nearly all countries have ratified both treaties. An exception is the United States, which signed both but only ratified the ICCPR, and then only in 1992. A longtime holdout, Cuba, has just announced that it soon will sign both covenants, for reasons that a Cuban newspaper details here.

On October 5, ...

... 2007 (today), celebrate World Teachers' Day, a holiday close to the heart of us IntLawGrrls.
... 1977 (30 years ago today), the United States affixed its signature to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, both of which were opened for signature in 1966 with the intention that they would operate as instruments for the enforcement of rights guaranteed in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The United States became a full member of the ICCPR, which now has 160 states parties, in 1992. The ICESCR has 156 states parties, but the United States is not among them.
... 1943, U.S. Rep. Virginia Brown-Waite (R-N.Y.) was born in Albany, New York.