Individuals at Risk

Since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, the international community has jointly recognized that all human rights are indivisible and interdependent. However, the marginalization of economic, social and cultural rights throughout the 20th century presents a consistent challenge for the increasing numbers of individuals and organizations currently acting to reclaim these rights.  For more than 45 years, Amnesty International has mobilized millions of people around the world, constantly reshaping its focus to address the most stringent human rights challenges.  The global epidemic of mass forced evictions, the widespread denial of access to essential health services (UA 11/08), and discrimination against minorities in access to education are among the most recently annexed issues to our agenda, reflecting a firm belief in the right of all individuals to live with dignity.

For many, freedom from want is just as important as freedom from fear.  Half the world's citizens (three billion people) are forced to live on less than $2 a day. This compromises their nutrition, health, and educational prospects. Women, many raising children alone, make up 70 percent of the world's poorest.  FINCA International, a globally active NGO whose mission is to provide financial services to the world's lowest-income entrepreneurs, is only one of the organizations focused on promoting sustainable solutions to the paramount challenge of poverty.  The Village Banking Campaign initiated by FINCA uses the power of microfinance as a key tool in the global movement to end poverty:  "The microfinance movement was born to ease the suffering caused by poverty, and to awaken the global economy's sleeping giant: the under-capitalized productivity of the world's working poor."  Find out more...the macro-goal of ending poverty takes a global village to achieve!

Despite common perception, economic and social inequality is a chronic presence in countries of all political constitutions, and all levels of development. The US has been the subject of broad criticism for not recognizing rights formally recorded in the constitutions of many other, particularly newer, states.  Social and economic rights to decent housing, medical care and jobs are national legal commitments for countries like Sweden.  It is not enough that people happen to have the necessary resources to momentarily subsist; the continued enjoyment of economic and social security must be legally guaranteed. Hunger, homelessness and lack of educational opportunities are not unsolvable social problems or purely the result of a lack of resources - they are the by-products of laws, policies and actions that indirectly undermine people's human rights. States, in the spirit of the social contract they are founded upon, have the primary responsibility to guarantee economic, social and cultural rights, ensuring non-discrimination, whether direct or indirect, in the realization of these rights. Where national resources fall short, international cooperation and assistance become imperative.

Although economic, social and cultural rights have often been portrayed as second generation rights, they have, in fact, been present in the national conscience of states for centuries.  As early as the 18^th century, French and the American public dialogue included concepts such as "the pursuit of happiness" and "égalité et fraternité" (equality and brotherhood).  The core principles of our shared humanity place the responsibility to react on all of us and make each individual struggle for survival our own: "the recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world" (The Universal Declaration of Human Rights).

In Solidarity,

Elena Marrs