By its nature as a pronouncement of high normative principles, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) did not address the hard questions related to the creation of institutions to begin the process of bridging the gap between statement of ideals and practical realization. However, starting with the grand bifurcation that produced the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) as the two institutionally separated offspring of the UDHR, the UN human rights treaty order has evolved in such a way that the UDHR’s inclusion of the entire...

More than fifty years ago the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognized that an individual requires certain civil, political, economic, and social freedoms in order to “live life well.” The Universal Declaration did not attach relative values to the rights that it recognized—each right was identified as an essential ingredient of dignified personhood.¹ However, since the adoption of the Universal Declaration the protection of civil and political rights has systematically been given priority over the protection of economic, social, and cultural rights. As a result, the potential of the Universal Declaration to promote the betterment of human existence has...

Even as the post-Cold War era is marked by a heightened emphasis on human rights,¹ the international human rights regime is being downsized as governments divest themselves of the responsibility to provide social services and ensure adequate living and working standards.² At the same time as the increasingly powerful international financial institutions are overseeing a transfer of social policy issues from the United Nations to states, governments are under pressure from the same institutions to move previously public responsibilities into the hands of private actors through privatizing, subcontracting, and outsourcing.³ By definition these private actors, often multinational corporations, sacrifice “community...

At the turn of the new century, as at the beginning of the last, the world’s nations are a disparate series of economies varying enormously in their characteristics. Speaking generally, in the north, countries have passed through an industrial revolution, through a period of progressive and incremental improvements in standards of living and through several centuries of gradual, if imperfect, diffusion of wealth through the ranks of society. In the south, for various reasons, nations evidence fewer of these transformations. In the developed nations, fundamental human rights, including labor rights, have been advanced, codified, and, for the most part, observed....

The rise of the market and eclipse of the state has become one of the defining conditions of contemporary social change. The settled expectation that the state could be prevailed upon to secure greater equality and welfare for its citizens is eroding, swept away by new desire to promote the efficiency and productivity of markets. The result has been a fundamental alteration to the language and terms in which political reform must now be pursued, accompanied by new constraints on the horizon of possibilities for social justice.

The crucial idea animating the current framework is by now almost too familiar:...

Every year worldwide, an estimated 585,000 women die of complications of pregnancy and childbirth,¹ a rate of 1,600 maternal deaths each day. At least seven million women who survive childbirth suffer serious health problems, and a further fifty million women suffer adverse health consequences after childbirth.² The overwhelming majority of these deaths and complications occur in developing countries, and most could be prevented by cost-effective health interventions.³ Countrywide maternal mortality rates present the largest discrepancy in any public health statistics between developed and developing countries.⁴

The causes of maternal deaths and disabilities are multiple and complex.⁵ They range from the...

In May 1997, after years of study, Canada altered its method of calculating child support by adopting child support guidelines for claims brought under the Divorce Act, 1985.¹ The adoption of the guidelines was fueled in part by a concern that the existing method of calculating child support had been generating low awards that did not adequately provide for children’s economic needs.² A 1981 discussion paper described this concern in the following terms:

In some cases the family’s financial resources are simply insufficient to provide adequate child support. In these situations the problem of low child support awards is part...

The implementation of economic, social, and cultural rights has been historically a problematic area in international human rights law theory and practice. Among other problems, the history of neglect of these rights has meant that the means to prevent and remedy violations remain underdeveloped. Equally frustrating is the fact that institutions and programs that should be expected to contribute to the realization of economic, social, and cultural rights often fail in this role and in some cases are even counterproductive, causing further harm where they should be providing assistance.

Given this situation, the development of effective measures for the realization...

Within the practice of human rights, historically, civil and political rights have been privileged over economic, social, and cultural rights,¹ with the Cold War capitalist, liberal states having promoted the former and socialist states having promoted the latter. Paradoxically, the end of the Cold War and the dismantling of socialist structures, policies and ideologies has coincided with a new emphasis on economic, social, and cultural rights at the international level, an emphasis which appears to be gaining strength as we enter the new millennium. While this new emphasis can be expected to encourage initiatives seeking to protect and promote those...

In many parts of the world, lands that are rich in natural resources continue to be inhabited by peoples whose origins in the lands predate those of the states that engulf them. In such areas, efforts on the part of states and transnational corporations to develop the natural resources frequently come into conflict with the indigenous inhabitants and their claims to the lands and resources in question. This genre of conflict has implications not just for the physical well-being of indigenous people who subsist from fragile ecosystems, but also for the integrity of their cultural and social patterns, which are...