2008] The Minimum Core of Economic and Social Rights 119 2005, the Committee purported to correct this imbala nce by issuing a General Comment on the aspects of cultural ri ghts protected unde r the International Covenant on Economic, Soci al and Cultural Rights (“the Covenant”), and 22 including a definition of a “min imum core” of cultural rights. Notwithstanding this development, this Article does no t extend its analysis to ltural rights are often cultural rights. 23 While it concedes that cu inappropriately overlooked in commenta ry on the Covenant, 24 and while it acknowledges the mutually dependent relations between the economic, social, and cultural aspects of material well being, 25 this Article limits its analysis to economic and social rights for two re asons. First, at the level of political agency, challenges arise in addressing claims of redistribution that are unlike those involved in struggles for recognition.26 These differences become clear when investigating the normative source s of a plausible co re of economic and social rights and the obst acles to consensus. Although the three categories of rights were placed within the same Covenant,27 economic and social rights are more central to the intern ational ideological disagreement of the l ast century and to the interna tional agreement (at least on the nature of the practical challenge in socioeconomic provision, if not the shape of the solution) for this century. 28 Disagreement and agr eement on cultural rights is somewhat dissimilar: most relevant to this Article’s aims is the need to allow for change and multiplicity in the expre ssion of cultural rights, 29 which is d ifferently attenuated for economic and social rights. Secondly, at a more methodological level, I argue that there are importan t tensions between economic and social rights on the one hand and cultural rights on the other, which caution against a grouped analysis. From one view, group rights for minority cultures harm material interests by keeping unequal distributions in place, a tension which is 22. See, e.g., U.N. Comm. on Econ., Soc. & Cultural Rights [ECOSOC], General Comment No. 17: The Right of Everyone to Benefit fro m the Protection of th e Moral and Materia l Interests resulting from any Scientific, Literary or Artistic Production of Which He or She is the Author (art. 15) , ¶ 39, U.N. Doc. E/C.12/GC/17 (Jan 12, 2005) [hereinafter General Comment No. 17]. 23. Neither are property rights and labor rights examined in any length in this Article, despite their inclusion in som e expressions of economic and social rights. See, e.g., Daintith, supra note 19, at 58-61. 24. Asbjørn Eide, Cultural Rights as Individual Human Rights , in ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL RIGHTS, supra note 4, at 289 (describing cultural rights “almost as a remnant category” in commentary on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Covenant). 25. See, e.g., JEANNE M. WOODS & HOPE LEWIS, HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE GLOBAL MARKETPLACE: ECONOMIC, SOCIAL, AND CULTURAL DIMENSIONS, xvii (2005). 26. See NANCY FRASER & AXEL HONNETH, RECOGNITION OR REDISTRIBUTION? A POLITICALPHILOSOPHICAL EXCHANGE (2003) [hereinafter F RASER & HONNETH, RECOGNITION OR REDISTRIBUTION] (debating the appropriate separation between the politics of recognition and redistribution in critical theory). 27. JOHN P. HUMPHREY, HUMAN RIGHTS & THE UNITED NATIONS 158-62 (1984); Philip Alston & G erard Quinn, The Nature and Scope of States Parties' Obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights , 9 H UM. RTS. Q. 156 (1987) (describing the transition to two separate Covenants from one original covenant on human rights). 28. See United Nations Millennium Declaration, G.A. Res. 55/2, U.N. Doc A/RES/55/2 (Sept. 18, 2000); see also U.N. Millennium Development Goals, http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals (last visited Nov. 1, 2007) [hereinafter MDGs] (claiming that the eight MDGs—which include the halving of extreme poverty, the halting of the spread of HI V/AIDS, and the provision of universal prim ary education by 2015—“form a blueprint agreed to by all the world’s countries and all the world’s leading development institutions”). 29. E.g., Dominic McGoldrick, Culture, Cultures, and Cultural Rights, in E CONOMIC, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL RIGHTS IN ACTION 447, 450 (Mashood A. Baderin & Robert McCorquodale eds., 2007).