The right to health ensuring the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health including access to all medical services, nutrition, sanitation, and clean water and air. >>>

The right to food guaranteeing freedom from hunger and access to safe and nutritious food. >>>

The right to housing ensuring access to a safe, secure, habitable, and affordable home with freedom from forced eviction. >>>

The right to work guaranteeing the opportunity to have fulfilling and dignified work under safe and healthy conditions and with fair wages affording a decent living for oneself and ones family. It also provides for freedom from unemployment and the right to organize. >>>

The right to education ensuring an education that enables all persons to participate effectively in a free society and is directed to the full development of the human personality. >>>

The right to social security guaranteeing that everyone regardless of age or ability to work is guaranteed the means necessary to procure basic needs and services. >>>

To learn about the basic principles of the human rights framework >>>

Where are Economic and Social Rights Protected?

Economic and social rights are protected under a wide range of international and regional instruments including declarations and covenants. Human rights declarations represent a commitment by signatory countries to meet stated human rights standards. Covenants, also known as treaties or conventions, are international law agreements entered into by governments. Once covenants or treaties are ratified they become part of domestic law.

Declarations and covenants that protect economic and social rights include:

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
The Convention on the Rights of the Child
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women
The American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man

What Obligations do Governments have Under Economic and Social Rights Standards?

Governments must respect, protect and fulfill all human rights. Governments must also progressively implement economic and social rights, as well as ensure a minimum core content of these rights. Finally, governments are required to monitor the realization of economic and social rights. >>>

What Commitments has the UNITED STATES Made Under International Law to Ensure Economic and Social Rights?

The United States, as one of the primary drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, was one of the first countries to commit to protecting economic and social rights under the human rights framework. Since then, the United States has been recalcitrant in meeting its promise to the people within its own borders. The United States has signed but not ratified both the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. By signing these treaties, the United States has at a minimum agreed not to violate the spirit and purpose of the treaties, but it has failed to fully commit to the human rights standards they contain. The United States has ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which prohibits discrimination in economic and social fields, but does not guarantee economic and social rights.

By virtue of its membership in the Organization of American States, the United States is bound under regional law to the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man, which fully protects economic and social rights¹. Yet, despite rulings by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights finding that the Declaration is binding on all member states, the United States consistently rejects this position and claims it is not legally bound to uphold the Declaration.

¹ In order to become a member of the Organization of American States, a member state must ratify the OAS treaty, which the United States has done. This treaty makes the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man binding on the member states.

photo by Harvey Finkle