In the immediate post‐World War II context, these questions were fast emerging as central both to
the competition between two ideological systems, the socialist "East" and the free market "West",
and the debates on decolonization. The Cold War was beginning as the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights was being drafted ; and the struggle for political independence and economic
emancipation of developing nations was being launched, at a time when colonial empires were
already being perceived as anachronistic. It is fortunate that, at an early stage in the work of the
Commission on Human Rights, three separate working groups were established, one to work on a
draft (non binding) declaration, under the chairmanship of Eleanor Roosevelt and with the French
delegate René Cassin as rapporteur, and the two others to work, respectively, on the text of a
convention (binding for the States ratifying it) and on measures of implementation: as illustrated by
the fact that it took eighteen years for two convenants to be adopted, implementing in treaty form
the bold language of the Declaration, no visible progress could have been achieved in the early years
if all these issues had been dealt with together, as part of a single package (Glendon 2001: 87).
Instead, agreement was found on a political statement of principle, that the delegates to the UN
General Assembly understood as producing no binding legal effects. The Universal Declaration of
Human Rights was adopted just before midnight on 10 December 1948 by forty‐eight votes in favor,
eight abstentions, and no vote against. The abstentions came from the Soviet Union and its satellites,
South Africa, and Saudi Arabia. The Declaration includes a range of economic, social and cultural
rights in articles 22 to 27. But the first of these provisions, concerning the right to social security,
includes language that applies generally to all the economic, social and cultural rights recognized. It
states :
Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization,
through national effort and international co‐operation and in accordance with the organization
and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his
dignity and the free development of his personality.
The reference to the "organization and resources of each State" encapsulated two separate ideas in
one single, compromise formula. The expression was meant to convey the idea that the realization of
economic, social and cultural rights was without prejudice of the means chosen by each State to this
effect, and that States had a choice, in particular, between systems that rely largely on centralized
planning by the State, and systems that recognize a greater role to the market. But it also included
the idea that, for the implementation of economic, social and cultural rights, States require
resources, and that their ability to guarantee such rights depends on the degree of development
achieved. In addition, consistent with the development agenda that accompanied the establishment
of the post‐war Bretton Woods order, article 28 of the Declaration referred to the need to move
towards an international order that enables countries' efforts to implement economic, social and
cultural rights at home, stating that "Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which
the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized".
Though the Universal Declaration of Human Rights�� laid the foundations, not until the 1960s did a
proper United Nations human rights regime emerge, after the adoption of the first binding human
rights treaties implementing in legal form the promise of the Declaration. This gradual codification
process had a paradoxical impact on the separation between civil and political rights and economic,
social and cultural rights. The first human rights treaty to be adopted, the International Convention
on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, was adopted by the UN General Assembly on
21 December 1965 (United Nations General Assembly 1965). It included an undertaking "to prohibit
and to eliminate racial discrimination in all its forms and to guarantee the right of everyone, without
distinction as to race, colour, or national or ethnic origin, to equality before the law", notably in the
enjoyment of a range of economic, social and cultural rights. The inclusion of economic, social and
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CRIDHO‐WP‐2013/2: O. De Schutter – Economic,Social and Cultural Rights as Human Rights: An Introduction