128 THE YALE JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW A. [Vol. 33: 113 A Needs-Based Core: Life, Survival, and Basic Needs In the first formulation, the minimu m core reflects the aspects of the right which satisfy the “bas ic needs” of the rights -holders, rather than any supplementary, elective, or more ambitious level of interests. This type of inquiry immediately orients the “cor e” of the right to the essential and minimally tolerable levels of food, hea lth, housing, and education. Yet this formula provides little guid ance in substantiating th e minimum core without answering a second question—that is, what are the “basi c needs” needed for? 75 This question may be answered in strumentally—for example, “basic needs” are the material interests or resources required for basic functioning, or conversely for human flourishing (two very different normative goals, the latter relating directly to our second contested essence for the minimum core). Or we may ans wer this question categorically, 76 in the s ense that “basic needs” are required for “a mini mum condition for a bearable life,”77 or for “a decent chance at a reasonab ly healthy and active life of more or less normal length.”78 The Committee’s original formulatio n—suggesting that t he “minimum essential levels of each of the rights” require the satisfaction “of essential foodstuffs, of essential primary healthcare, of basic sh elter and housing, or of the most basic forms of education” 79—is suggestive of the more categorical (or more flatly instrumental) formula of “basic needs” amounting to survival and life. The int ernational precursors to the Committee’s articulation of the minimum core—the statement s by e xperts which point ed to the minimum subsistence rights protected under the Covenant—similarly adopted a 80 categorical focus. The Inter-American Commission also affirmed the connection between the right s of survival and basic needs, linking both instrumentally to personal security.81 Survival links logically to life. Interpretation of both international instrumental and constitutional provisions have made this connection, drawing on the intuitive relation between the material protections necessary for the 75. As many theorists have noted, claim s of needs have a relational structure, taking the form “[a] needs x in order to y.” E.g., NANCY FRASER, UNRULY PRACTICES: POWER, DISCOURSE AND GENDER IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL THEORY 163 (1989) [hereinafter FRASER, UNRULY PRACTICES]. 76. Jeremy Waldron, Rights and Needs: The Myth of Disjunction , in LEGAL RIGHTS 87, 92-93 (Austin Sarat & Thomas R. Kearns eds., 1996) ( acknowledging the position that there may be no categorical meaning, only inst rumental meaning (citing B RIAN BARRY, POLITICAL ARGUMENT 48-49 (1965))). 77. Waldron, supra note 76, at 92. 78. HENRY SHUE, BASIC RIGHTS: SUBSISTENCE, AFFLUENCE AND U.S. FOREIGN POLICY 23 (2d ed. 1996). 79. General Comment No. 3, supra note 1, ¶ 10. 80. See supra note 41; see also Maastricht Guidelines on Violations of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, supra note 41, ¶¶ 9-10. 81. Annual Report 1979-1980, Inter-Am erican Comm’n on Human Rights, OEA/Ser.L/V/II.50, doc. 13 rev. 1, at 2 (1980), available at http://www.iachr.org/annualrep/ 79.80eng/chap.6.htm. As the Inter-American Commission has stated: The essence of the legal obligation incurred by an y government in this area is to strive to attain the economic and social aspirations of its people, by following an order that assigns priority to the basic needs of health, nutrition and education. The priority of the ‘rights of survival’ and ‘basic needs’ is a natural consequence of the right to personal security. Id.