Social and economic rights

In 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for the first time comprehensively catalogued the fundamental human rights that should be guaranteed to all persons. This declaration was an aspirational statement of goals, and it made no distinction between classes of rights. During attempts to transpose the document into a legally enforceable treaty, negotiations deteriorated into polemics. Each side adopted extreme, discordant approaches, and the result was abandonment of the goal of producing one legally enforceable treaty. It was agreed that two treaties would be drafted, which marked the initial and persistent divide in international law between two sets of rights: civil and political, and social and economic. These events set these rights on divergent paths, with differing degrees of importance being attached to each. The subordination of social and economic rights to their civil and political counterparts in international law created significant roadblocks to the promotion and force accorded to these rights. As a result of their subordination, the struggle for equivalent legal protection in international, regional, and domestic systems has been an arduous one. The essay charts the development of fundamental social and economic rights in international law, drawing on regional and domestic jurisprudence and culminating in the adoption of the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (2008).