The International Covenant On Economic, Social, And Cultural Rights
Simultaneous with the re-packaging of the UDHR’s First Generation Rights into the ICCPR in 1966, the U.N. General Assembly also re-packaged the UDHR’s Second Generation Rights into the International Covenant On Economic, Social, And Cultural Rights (“ICESCR”), thus elevating interventionist, welfare-state ideology into the status of another legally binding regime. Similar to the ICCPR, the ICESCR entered into force only ten years after its creation when the requisite number of nations ratified it. President Jimmy Carter signed the ICESCR in 1979, but the Senate has never given its advice and consent, so the treaty remains unratified by the United States to this day. And as usual this offers little comfort – Carter’s signature by itself binds the United States not to defeat the “object and purpose” of the ICESCR, meaning that any serious effort to roll back unlawful government programs domestically will meet with much gnashing of teeth and beating of breasts from the “human rights” community.
As discussed previously with regard to the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights, the Second Generation Rights re-appearing in the ICESCR have nothing to do with individual freedom and everything to do with governmental activism such as the redistribution of wealth and the reordering of private relationships. So we see once again the statism originally advocated by Eleanor Roosevelt in 1948:
Article 6(2) commands that governments expend taxpayers’ money to supply vocational training, an objective that at best belongs to the political realm, certainly not the moral or legal realms that the ICESCR purports to represent.
Article 7 commands private employers to provide specific levels of pay, promotion and vacation time, objectives that a genuinely free society would allow employers and employees to work out amongst themselves however they wish. Even if some nations dislike individual freedom and choose to enact this type of legislation, they have the sovereign power to do so – just as other nations should have the sovereign power not to.
Article 9 proclaims a universal “right” to social insurance, meaning that some citizens are now entitled to receive wealth from other citizens. Such redistributions are objectionable enough when they amount to optional public policy, but by making this type of policy mandatory the ICESCR again slips into moral perversion.
Article 10(2) mandates paid leave for childbearing mothers, another noble objective, but one that cannot be achieved by official diktat unless we admit once and for all that private citizens may not frame their contractual relationships as they choose.
Article 11 again mandates an “adequate” standard of living, something that tends to occur much more frequently in those societies where government does not presume to control private economic activity (i.e., the pursuit of happiness). Ironically, standards of living tend to suffer most in societies where governments micromanage the “production, conservation, and distribution of food” as counseled in Article 11(2).
Article 13 reiterates the UDHR’s call for “free” (i.e., taxpayer-financed) education that will inculcate children with attitudes, opinions, and behaviors friendly to the United Nations and its works. Lest any parents seek to school their children in an institution other than a government mill, Article 13(4) still commands that such institution deliver the pre-approved set of teachings.
Unlike its cousin the ICCPR, the ICESCR does not create a new bureaucracy charged with monitoring “human rights” abuses. Instead, that task falls to a separate United Nations entity – the Committee On Economic, Social, And Cultural Rights – which receives occasional reports from member nations and which issues commentary on how to advance the ICESCR’s goals. According to this Committee, “compulsory old-age insurance” is a human-rights imperative to be imposed by “national law,” meaning that any government declining to re-shuffle its citizens’ wealth is deemed guilty of a human-rights violation. The Committee also decrees that private employers may not decide for themselves whether to hire and fire as they see fit, even when a potential employee’s mental or physical health is unstable. With regard to equality between men and women, the Committee sweeps away the limited-government tradition of treating everybody as equal before the law, demanding rather that government drop all neutrality and actively force equality of conditions (the full scope of which remains entirely undefined). Finally (and all too predictably), the Committee seeks to graft these beliefs onto the minds of children, declaring that nations must “monitor” educational content to ensure that it advances the ICESCR’s objectives.
The ICESCR would be laughable but for the fact that its proponents take it seriously, and these proponents find it intolerable that the welfare state has not (quite) achieved the status of holy writ. Exemplifying this mindset is the late Robert Drinan – acclaimed priest, Georgetown University law professor, and U.S. Congressman – who eulogized the ICESCR as “an amazing document.” In awe of the interventionist philosophy of this document, Drinan scorned the United States’ hesitation as a threat “to the potential of the U.N. committee that supervises the [ICESCR’s] implementation.” We can only hope.
Simultaneous with the re-packaging of the UDHR’s First Generation Rights into the ICCPR in 1966, the U.N. General Assembly also re-packaged the UDHR’s Second Generation Rights into the International Covenant On Economic, Social, And Cultural Rights (“ICESCR”), thus elevating interventionist, welfare-state ideology into the status of another legally binding regime. Similar to the ICCPR, the ICESCR entered into force only ten years after its creation when the requisite number of nations ratified it. President Jimmy Carter signed the ICESCR in 1979, but the Senate has never given its advice and consent, so the treaty remains unratified by the United States to this day. And as usual this offers little comfort – Carter’s signature by itself binds the United States not to defeat the “object and purpose” of the ICESCR, meaning that any serious effort to roll back unlawful government programs domestically will meet with much gnashing of teeth and beating of breasts from the “human rights” community.
As discussed previously with regard to the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights, the Second Generation Rights re-appearing in the ICESCR have nothing to do with individual freedom and everything to do with governmental activism such as the redistribution of wealth and the reordering of private relationships. So we see once again the statism originally advocated by Eleanor Roosevelt in 1948:
Article 6(2) commands that governments expend taxpayers’ money to supply vocational training, an objective that at best belongs to the political realm, certainly not the moral or legal realms that the ICESCR purports to represent.
Article 7 commands private employers to provide specific levels of pay, promotion and vacation time, objectives that a genuinely free society would allow employers and employees to work out amongst themselves however they wish. Even if some nations dislike individual freedom and choose to enact this type of legislation, they have the sovereign power to do so – just as other nations should have the sovereign power not to.
Article 9 proclaims a universal “right” to social insurance, meaning that some citizens are now entitled to receive wealth from other citizens. Such redistributions are objectionable enough when they amount to optional public policy, but by making this type of policy mandatory the ICESCR again slips into moral perversion.
Article 10(2) mandates paid leave for childbearing mothers, another noble objective, but one that cannot be achieved by official diktat unless we admit once and for all that private citizens may not frame their contractual relationships as they choose.
Article 11 again mandates an “adequate” standard of living, something that tends to occur much more frequently in those societies where government does not presume to control private economic activity (i.e., the pursuit of happiness). Ironically, standards of living tend to suffer most in societies where governments micromanage the “production, conservation, and distribution of food” as counseled in Article 11(2).
Article 13 reiterates the UDHR’s call for “free” (i.e., taxpayer-financed) education that will inculcate children with attitudes, opinions, and behaviors friendly to the United Nations and its works. Lest any parents seek to school their children in an institution other than a government mill, Article 13(4) still commands that such institution deliver the pre-approved set of teachings.
Unlike its cousin the ICCPR, the ICESCR does not create a new bureaucracy charged with monitoring “human rights” abuses. Instead, that task falls to a separate United Nations entity – the Committee On Economic, Social, And Cultural Rights – which receives occasional reports from member nations and which issues commentary on how to advance the ICESCR’s goals. According to this Committee, “compulsory old-age insurance” is a human-rights imperative to be imposed by “national law,” meaning that any government declining to re-shuffle its citizens’ wealth is deemed guilty of a human-rights violation. The Committee also decrees that private employers may not decide for themselves whether to hire and fire as they see fit, even when a potential employee’s mental or physical health is unstable. With regard to equality between men and women, the Committee sweeps away the limited-government tradition of treating everybody as equal before the law, demanding rather that government drop all neutrality and actively force equality of conditions (the full scope of which remains entirely undefined). Finally (and all too predictably), the Committee seeks to graft these beliefs onto the minds of children, declaring that nations must “monitor” educational content to ensure that it advances the ICESCR’s objectives.
The ICESCR would be laughable but for the fact that its proponents take it seriously, and these proponents find it intolerable that the welfare state has not (quite) achieved the status of holy writ. Exemplifying this mindset is the late Robert Drinan – acclaimed priest, Georgetown University law professor, and U.S. Congressman – who eulogized the ICESCR as “an amazing document.” In awe of the interventionist philosophy of this document, Drinan scorned the United States’ hesitation as a threat “to the potential of the U.N. committee that supervises the [ICESCR’s] implementation.” We can only hope.
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