Socioeconomic Human Rights: Past and Future

Abstract

This is an exploration of the sources of and economic proclaimed in major twentieth century international human instruments. Efforts are made to explore particular sources of such and state duties in order to reconsider certain widely supported propositions. One of the propositions examined in this paper is the idea that something termed social rights evolved from the late nineteenth century as part of an expanding conception of national citizenry. The late British historian, T. H. Marshall, has incomparable influence on the literature concerning human through his thesis of a three-stage development of the of citizens, this ending with the emergence of rights.' Marshall's work draws rather sharp lines between such rights, identified with the availability of protection programs to every citizen as a matter of legal right and earlier approaches to protection that were based on means tests, programs that had little direct effect on inequality and that were not woven into the fabric of citizenship.2 A second issue that is addressed is the relationship between centuries old paternalistic ideas about the socioeconomic welfare of the poor which led to programs designed to promote protection at the national level and current interpretations of internationally prescribed and economic rights. Did the organized international community, during the quarter century following World War II, seek to go beyond paternalistic conceptions that focus on the duties of states rather than of the individuals? Or, alternatively, did that community merely prescribe a lowest common denominator of state duties in the name of human rights?