Closing the 'Escape Hatch': A Toolkit to Monitor the Progressive Realization of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights
Closing the 'Escape Hatch': A Toolkit to Monitor the Progressive Realization of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights
复制标题
DOI：
10.1093/jhuman/hup023
复制
发表时间：
2009-11-01
影响因子：
1
通讯作者：
Felner, Eitan
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Felner, Eitan
许多关于经济、社会和文化权利的工作都存在一个基本的矛盾。在理论层面，专家和倡导者普遍承认，“尽国家现有资源的最大限度”逐步实现这些权利的义务是实现这些权利的核心。然而，在实际层面上-就监测工作、实地调查和法院裁决而言-这一关键义务基本上被搁置一边，而将重点放在与这些权利有关的各种直接义务上，这些义务不取决于资源的可用性。这篇文章认为，虽然这种关注在许多方面都是有效的，但绕过逐步实现的标准严重限制了人权运动的能力，使政府对将数百万人变成可避免的剥夺的受害者的政策和做法负责，如文盲，营养不良，可预防的疾病，然后，文章提出了一个监测逐步实现义务的方法工具包。该工具包有两个组成部分：（1）一个由三个步骤组成的基本框架，每个步骤都有自己的简单方法;（2）一套近年来由各种研究人员开发或民间社会组织使用的更复杂的工具。这些方法可以成为社会变革的有力工具，使我们能够扩大受到审查和问责的政府政策领域，并为有关问题往往不是资源供应而是资源分配的说法提供客观的有效性。诚然，处理需要逐步实现的问题并不容易。它需要努力解决与资源限制和权衡有关的困难的规范和政策问题，并需要深入研究数据。这些通常不是人权专门知识的领域。尽管如此，人权运动现在已经足够成熟，可以克服这些挑战。
A basic paradox underlies much work on economic, social, and cultural rights. At the level of theory, there is widespread recognition among experts and advocates that the obligation to progressively realize these rights 'to the maximum of a state's available resources' is at the heart of their realization. However, at the practical level - in terms of monitoring efforts, field investigations, and adjudication by courts - this key obligation has largely been sidelined, and the focus instead has been on various immediate obligations related to these rights, which are not dependent on resource availability. This article argues that while this focus has been effective in many ways, circumventing the standard of progressive realization has severely constrained the ability of the human rights movement to hold governments accountable for policies and practices that turn millions of people into victims of avoidable deprivations such as illiteracy, malnutrition, preventable diseases, and homelessness.The article then proposes a methodological toolkit to monitor the obligation of progressive realization. This toolkit has two components: (1) a basic framework of three steps, each with its own simple methods; (2) a set of more sophisticated tools that have been developed in recent years by various researchers or used by civil society organizations. These methods can be powerful tools of social change, allowing us to expand the areas of government policy that come under scrutiny and accountability and to provide objective validity to claims that often the issue is not resource availability but rather resource distribution. Admittedly, addressing issues subject to progressive realization is not easy. It requires grappling with difficult normative and policy problems related to resource constraints and trade- offs, as well as delving into data. These are not typically areas of human rights expertise. Nevertheless, the human rights movement is now mature enough to overcome these challenges.