2008] The Minimum Core of Economic and Social Rights 135 African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights has held that the right to food “is inseparably linked to the dignity of human bei ngs and is t herefore essential for the enjoyment and fulfillment of other rights as health, education, work and political participation.”120 Advocates of the value of human di gnity contend that it enriches socioeconomic jurisprudence by justifyi ng claims for social services when groups lack material conditions necessary for a life of dignity and by focusing on the actual needs and circum stances of each individual. 121 Interpretations of dignity consistent with the protection of economic and social rights affirm “that people who are denied access to the basic social and economic rights are denied the opportunity to live their lives with a semblance of human dignity”122 and that “a social failure to va lue human dignity is at stake when individuals and groups experience depr ivations of subsistence needs.” 123 Such a value goes beyond mere survival needs, by attending to the effect on dignity of various redistributive interventions or omissions. Nonetheless, the value of di gnity creates its own challenges for substantiating the minimum core. As recognized by commen tators in both international law and constitutional law, “dig nity” can be measured subjectively or obj ectively. 124 In its subjective sense, dignity (and its correlative—the harm of injury to dignity) refers to the subjective effect of treatment on a claimant’ s feelings of self-worth and s elf-respect. 125 The subjective measure of dignity allows context and individual circumstances to be taken into account, yet it also has two disadvantages. First, it is pr ecisely this sensitivity to contex t that prevents its useful ness as a more general guide to determining the minimum core of economic and social rights, if we understand that to be a fixed and universal (or even society-wide) measure. Secondly, the subjective measure of harm to dignity pulls the interpretation of rights in a stat us quo-preserving direction by keeping the allo tments in place, which might be unjusti fied on more obj ective grounds. It is not implausible that in the area of economic and social rights, subjective dignity might be harmed by redistribution away from the wealthy and might also fail to disturb the low expectations of poor people about their entitlements. 126 I argue that a 120. Soc. and E con. Rights Action Ctr. for Ec on. and Soc. Rights v. Nigeria, Comm. No. 155/96, 2001-2002 Annual Activity Report of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, Annex V, ¶ 68, available at http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/africa/comcases/155-96b.html (declaring obligation not to destroy or contaminate food sources). 121. Sandra Liebenberg, The Value of Human Dignity in Interpreting Socio-Economic Rights , 21 S. AFR. J. HUM. RTS. 1, 18 (2005) [hereinafter Liebenberg, Interpreting Socio-Economic Rights]. 122. Pierre de Vos, Substantive Equality after Grootboom: The Emergence of Social and Economic Context as a Guiding Value in Equality Jurisprudence, 2001 ACTA JURIDICA 52, 64 (2001). 123. Liebenberg, Interpreting Socio-Economic Rights, supra note 121, at 23. 124. E.g., Schachter, supra note 111; cf. Weinrib, supra note 116, at 15-16 (exam ining universal and particularized meanings of human dignity). 125. RAWLS, supra note 74, at 225, 386-89 (describing self -respect as the m ost important primary good). 126. Varun Gauri, Social Rights and Economics: Claims to Health Care and Education in Developing Countries, in HUMAN RIGHTS AND DEVELOPMENT: TOWARDS MUTUAL REINFORCEMENT, supra note 95, at 78, 80 (noting “the habit of individuals subject to deprivation to lower their standards regarding what they need, want, a nd deserve”). For a description of this tendency, and a radical proposal for challenging it, see U NGER, supra note 74, at 514 (setting out an institutional program to destabilize certain obstinate conceptions of rights protections and security).