The Struggle for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights 

The stated objective of Amnesty International’s Human Rights for Human Dignity: A Primer on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights is twofold: to ‘serve not just as a useful resource for activists but as a stepping stone for taking practical action’ (Amnesty International 2014: 143). This 2014 Primer is an update of the 2005 edition, which was published after Amnesty International broadened its mandate in 2001 in order to include all human rights and a diversity of duty bearers (Amnesty International 2014: 17).

The Primer certainly succeeds in its first objective of providing a useful resource. It outlines key features of economic, social and cultural rights (ESC rights) in Chapter 1; provides an overview of most ESC rights in Chapter 2 (conspicuously absent is the right to social security); spells out obligations in Chapter 3; and clarifies ESC rights of a number of groups in Chapter 6. Chapter 4 explains how violations may be identified, and dismisses some often-used excuses for non-realization of ESC rights: armed conflict, and insufficient resources. Chapter 5 briefly dwells on some of the new duty bearers, that is, companies and the international financial institutions.

Chapter 7 complements the previous chapter with a presentation of some of the strategies that can be adopted for defending ESC rights. But earlier chapters, too, contain starting points for action, for example in the text boxes that describe concrete struggles and (legal) actions that have been undertaken. Whereas the Primer is generally balanced in the illustrations and strategies it introduces, here and there a risk of self-promotion lurks. For example, on p. 106, Amnesty International’s campaign for corporate accountability in the extractive sector is showcased, in which a sub-heading reads: ‘Amnesty International works’ (Amnesty International 2014: 106); and again on p. 124, where the text box deals with Afghanistan’s displaced people, and in which it is explicitly mentioned how Amnesty International has documented the plight of Afghans displaced by fighting (Amnesty International 2014: 124).

Austerity measures are mentioned here and there, but may have deserved more systematic attention. All the more so since, very often, strong ideological choices rather than economic necessity underscore these measures. Human rights activists may need additional input in order to strategically navigate ideological choices without becoming politically partisan.

Whereas it is explicitly acknowledged that ‘[a]ll significant advances in the protection of human rights have developed from social struggles, including those of organized labour, anti-colonialists, the women’s movement and Indigenous Peoples’ (Amnesty International 2014: 131), working in partnership receives only half a page of attention, and trade unions are not mentioned at all as a potential partner. More fundamentally, it remains unclear to what extent action is driven from above (international campaigns) or from below, and how local communities in their daily struggles for ESC rights can or should be part and parcel of any action that is undertaken. That may be food for thought for a next update, perhaps ten years down the road?

The Primer comes at a moment of intense academic interest in ESC rights. Young’s Constituting Economic and Social Rights studies ESC rights as international human rights and as constitutional rights. She looks at methods of interpretation, processes of enforcement and strategies of contestation as processes that constitute rights, that is, ‘socially institute, so that the commitments are committed to social understanding, and are realized effectively in law’ (Young 2012: 6). Whereas Young’s starting point is the interdependence of all human rights, Arosemena (in Rights, Scarcity, and Justice) submits that what he calls ‘welfare duties’ are special, and therefore need a particular kind of judicial engagement in situations of scarcity. Arosemena analyses three strategies of judicial engagement with welfare duties—reasonableness, prioritization and deliberative democratic dialogue. On the basis of qualities comparative analysis, he concludes that prioritization is the best strategy and therefore ‘deserves more study and that alternatives to reasonableness should figure more prominently in the minds of academics, judges, politicians and activists’ (Arosemena 2014: 192). ESC rights litigation is also at the heart of a collected volume on Social and Economic Rights in Theory and Practice, which examines the effectiveness of ESC rights law in bringing about real change (García et al. 2015).

Not surprisingly, the global financial crisis and austerity measures have received their deal of attention in recent ESC rights literature (ELSA 2015; Nolan 2014). That is no different in what can be seen as a recent handbook on ESC rights, edited by Riedel, Giacca and Golay (2014): it dedicates a whole part of the book to ESC rights in times of crisis. This volume also stands out in paying ample attention to the relationship between ESC rights and other legal regimes, ranging from trade and investment to environmental law, humanitarian law and criminal law. The intersection with international humanitarian and criminal law has been treated in a fascinating way in two recent monographs by Giacca (2014) and Schmid (2015).

All this thought-provoking literature on ESC rights complements the Primer, but cannot substitute for it. The Primer may be the concise, hands-on book that practitioners need. At the same time, practitioners and the authors of the Primer can be further inspired by the wealth of increasingly rich academic literature on the subject.

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