Prominent Human Rights Advocates and Academics Join CESR's Board; Changes Part of New Strategic Direction to Tackle Challenge of Monitoring Economic and Social Rights Worldwide
As part of a strategic re-visioning process to strengthen its leadership and programs, the Chair of the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR), Philip Alston, and the organization’s new Executive Director, Eitan Felner, announce the appointment of Victor Abramovich, Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, José María Maravall and Richard Goldstone to the Board of Directors.
Victor Abramovich is Commissioner for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and its Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Women. He was the Executive Director of CELS, the leading human rights organization in Argentina a Board member of CEJIL and of Ecuador’s Center for Economic and Social Rights (CDES).
Sakiko Fukuda-Parr is currently Visiting Professor at the Graduate Program in International Affairs at the New School. From 1995 to 2004, she was director of the Human Development Reports. She has written and spoken widely on human rights as an essential aspect of development. She is founding editor of the Journal of Human Development. Prior to that, she held a number of positions in UNDP and the World Bank with management and technical responsibilities.
Richard Goldstone served as a Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa (1994-2003) and as the first Chief Prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda (1994-1996). He is currently the co-chairperson of the Human Rights Institute of the International Bar Association and a member of the committee appointed by the Secretary-General of the United Nations to investigate allegations about the Iraq Oil for Food Program.
José María Maravall is Academic Director of the Center for Advanced studies in Social Sciences at the Juan March Institute in Spain, and a professor of Sociology at the Universidad Complutense in Madrid, Spain. He served as Minister of Education and Science for the Government of Spain during the 1980’s, and has written numerous books on politics and economics.
“Since its founding twelve years ago, CESR has pioneered monitoring and advocacy initiatives to promote economic and social rights in the United States and around the world. The Center has played a major role in putting these rights firmly on the agenda of the international human rights community,” Alston said. “The redesign of our programs, the appointment of a new Executive Director, and the addition of individuals of the highest international standing to our Board will enable us to build on these achievements and to develop in important new directions so that our work will have even greater impact.”
New Strategic Directions and Methodology
In addition to appointing a diverse group of new Board members, the change process at CESR includes opening an office in Madrid, Spain, in recognition of the critical role European governments are playing in the effort to monitor and promote economic and social rights, and developing new programs. The process will culminate in the re-launching of CESR’s program work with a groundbreaking methodology for monitoring, reporting and advocacy on economic and social rights.
CESR’s innovative methodology will blend the human rights framework and traditional strategies for human rights documentation and advocacy with quantitative data on social and economic indicators already being generated by development economists. “For years, governments have averted accountability on economic and social rights issues by either claiming that it is impossible to measure these rights, or that they are mere ‘aspirations,’” said Felner. “We will show that the challenge of measurement can be surmounted by working with development economists to analyze these issues through a human rights lens.”
CESR will use this new tool to build on its years of work to hold governments accountable for upholding their citizens’ rights to education, health, housing, food, a healthy environment, an adequate standard of living, decent work conditions, and respect for cultural rights according to international law. The Board and staff of CESR are engaged in a rigorous process to launch this new phase of work which will be implemented in the months ahead.