Isfahan Merali and Valerie Oosterveld , Giving Meaning to Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. - Eds - book review

Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, Sept, 2002

Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. $45.00 hardcover.

The struggle for human rights, as exemplified in the adoption of the Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, has undoubtedly been one of the great, progressive achievements of this century. The Declaration brought together diverse nations and peoples, securing an international commitment to ensuring that people everywhere had basic rights which would be recognized and upheld. The Declaration also created a shared cultural ethos that pressured recalcitrant nations to accept human rights, and it provided an impetus for the extension of human rights to specific fields of human endeavor. The institutionalization of a rights approach in social policy and social work is but one example of the way the human rights ethos has been infused into these different fields.

Despite the progress which has been made, this book shows that there is little ground for complacency. It is not only that human rights are widely flouted, or that hypocrisy about the implementation of human rights is widespread, but that the international community has placed far more emphasis on civil and political rights than on social, economic and cultural rights. It is this theme which the editors of this useful book address, and which should be of interest and concern to social policy scholars, administrators and social workers.

The editors point out that the Declaration has a truly universal ambit in that it addressed a wide range of human rights issues ranging, on the one hand, from a familiar concern with civil and political fights (such as the right to vote, the right to free expression and the right to legal representation in criminal cases) to social, cultural and economic rights (such as the right to an adequate standard of living, education, health care and income protection). However, in subsequent attempts to operationalize and implement the rights enshrined in the Charter, political and civil fights were given priority while social, cultural and economic rights were neglected. As one of the contributors to the volume points out, this was partly a function of the Cold War when the United States and its allies campaigned for priority to be given to political and civil rights, while the Soviet Union and its allies sought to emphasize social, cultural and economic rights. Consequently, two separate international legal instruments, known as the Covenants, emerged with the result that the struggle for human rights has been bifurcated into two separate agendas. It also had the unfortunate consequence that social cultural and economic rights remain of secondary importance.

The book's argument is that the separation of rights into two distinct categories needs to be ended and that in a new, integrated approach, civil political, social, economic and cultural rights need to be given equal emphasis. The various contributors, who come from different countries, address different aspects of this argument, and raise a number of related issues. For example, the book contains interesting material on women's rights, children's rights and housing rights with reference to the situation in Palestine where the occupying forces have consistently flouted the right to adequate shelter by the frequent demolition of people's homes. The book also contains an interesting chapter on indigenous land rights in Central America where commercial logging and oil interests have flagrantly ignored local people and their social and cultural rights.

While the book is in some ways a depressing account of the violation of social, economic and cultural rights in many parts of the world, it also shows that the struggle continues. There have been some successes such as the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. The book also shows that non-governmental organizations are much more active in the campaign for the extension of economic, social and cultural rights. As governments in many parts of the world have been weakened, mobilization at the community level will be an essential element in the campaign for the extension of these rights. This is an important book which should be widely consulted by anyone working in the social welfare field today. It provides a great of useful information about the legal and procedural aspects of human rights and brings an important perspective to debates about social welfare, particularly at the international level where the need to adopt and implement economic, social and cultural rights is more urgent than even before.