ANNEX: 2. Positive and Negative factors influencing ESCR advocacy

One of the primary reasons that ESCR have not made a wide impact is that they are more difficult to promote than CPR. This has slowed advocacy efforts and discouraged some groups and movements from using these rights. Some of the obstacles are intrinsic to ESCR and will always pose difficulties, while others are related to current social, political and economic conditions and may change over time. While they are less obvious, there are also some factors making ESCR advocacy easier and more effective. Both sets of factors are important to developing practical advocacy strategies.

Obstacles

• A lack of awareness and underlying prejudices against ESCR: One of the most formidable obstacles facing ESCR advocates is the general lack of awareness about, and even bias against, these rights. This is particularly true in the Americas where human rights have often been narrowly defined and limited to CPR. Much of human rights work depends upon public support and public outrage, and the lack of awareness and information about ESCR makes it more difficult to provoke a public reaction to violations. Governments can violate ESCR with relative impunity because most people do not recognize the acts as violations
• Lack of legal experience and precedents: ESCR have not enjoyed the same legal recognition given to CPR. While many national constitutions include ESCR, they are rarely the subject of litigation and national judicial systems have very little experience dealing with these rights. This lack of experience extends to the Inter-American system: ESCR are barely recognized by the Inter-American Convention, have never been the subject of Court decisions, and are given short shrift by the Commission. This lack of experience and precedents presents a double obstacle – it deprives advocates of an accessible legal alternative and it de-legitimizes ESCR in the eyes of the public and government institutions
• Lack of institutional oversight mechanisms: The lack of legal experience and precedents is closely related to the lack of oversight mechanisms. While CPR violations are monitored and prosecuted by attorney generals and Defensores del Pueblo, these institutions are rarely committed to or capable of monitoring violations of ESCR and no comparable institutions exist to hold violators accountable
• A weakened state and international violators: Over the past half-century, states have lost much of the sovereign control implicit in human rights treaties. Today's governments are besieged by a host of outside actors over whom they an ever-decreasing capacity to influence. Rapid privatization, free trade agreements, economic integration, external debt burdens, and the leverage of TNCs have tremendously limited government prerogatives, particularly among the smaller, developing countries and particularly in relation to ESCR. It is no longer sufficient to target only national governments. Today’s ESCR activists must also address the external debt burden, free trade dictates, powerful private industries and a host of other factors that play a significant, if not overwhelming role in violations. This break with traditional state-focused models of advocacy poses both jurisprudential and practical problems.
• Challenge the dominant forces: ESCR are further complicated by the challenge they pose to the dominant actors and forces in society. While civil liberties and formal political rights are generally consistent with the reigning free market currents and neo-liberal ideologies, ESCR are more often at odds with these demands. Multilateral Banks, northern governments, free trade agreements, Reebok and Levi’s all strongly support CPR; but ESCR advocates pushing for government social programs and greater control over corporate abuses will find little support from these quarters. The dominant political and financial actors in today’s society continue to insist on the narrow vision of human rights that all but excludes ESCR. Human rights groups with strong relationships to some of these dominant forces may be concerned about alienating them by taking up ESCR.
• Lack clear, discrete solutions: Under reigning political and economic structures, ESCR are more complicated than CPR. Almost all countries have institutions and systems already in place to ensure CPR and solutions to existing violations are relatively straightforward. Ensuring basic levels of education, health, food, housing and employment is a far more daunting task. These issues lack the consensus and clear-cut paths that CPR enjoy. ESCR advocates face difficult economic and social questions that have yet to be fully resolved and may even find themselves on opposite sides of certain issues (e.g. full employment vs. adequate wages and working conditions); ESCR will often require the sort of controversial or political positions feared by many traditional advocates.
• Lack sensationalist appeal: A single case of torture or disappearance will inevitably draw greater attention and public outrage than 100 or even 1000 child deaths by malnutrition or contaminated water. Society has been conditioned to accept certain things as natural and others as unacceptable “violations.” While the government’s hand in ESCR-related suffering can be clearly established, there are more tangible and sensational element to CPR violations. As so much of human rights advocacy depends on being able to attract media and public attention, this lack of a sensational element makes ESCR advocacy that much more difficult.
• Lack of models: Owing to the long-standing neglect of ESCR within the human rights movement, there are very few advocacy models, guides or strategies to draw upon. Traditional models are of limited value in this field, and most ESCR advocates are forging new ground in terms of tactics, allies and targets. For groups with limited resources, there is little room for trail and error and many advocates struggle with the need to go beyond the comfortable, time-tested approaches that have served the CPR field.
• Interdisciplinary and resource-intensive: ESCR advocacy requires more than the legal or activist-oriented staffing of traditional human rights groups. ESCR advocacy requires the ability to investigate, analyze and take positions on complex economic and social issues. Groups must have access to experts in a variety of social sciences as well as the law. Many human rights groups with their existing experience and expertise in CPR are reluctant to embark upon the new and complicated task of ESCR.
• Lack of resources: While resources are a problem for all human rights groups, there can be no question that ESCR advocates face the most difficult struggle of all. Some of the larger foundations like Ford, MacArthur and NOVIB have come around to ESCR in recent years, but the overwhelming share of resources available to human rights advocacy is still oriented towards the traditional fields of CPR or newer fields like women’s rights. While ESCR are making ground, the influence of corporate and government interests in funding spheres make it unlikely that ESCR will ever capture a significant share of available human rights resources.

Advantages

While the obstacles to ESCR advocacy are more obvious, there are definite advantages that should also be taken into account. Among the most important are:

• The potential to mobilize populations: Given how widespread poverty and economic hardship are in developing countries, basic survival issues like health, education, food and housing, are more likely to mobilize people than torture or free speech. This is particularly true in Latin America, where dictators and repression are no longer such pressing issues and where development has left so many people behind. There is a much broader potential constituency among the grassroots for ESCR advocacy.
• The strong existing social movements: Latin America enjoys strong social movements capable of taking full advantage of human rights instruments. Among the most important are indigenous, women’s, labor and environmental movements, all of which have begun to incorporate more general economic and social justice issues like structural adjustment programs and free trade agreements into their agendas. The Catholic Church and more community-based groups are also strong potential allies.
• Familiarity with human rights: The history of human rights struggles in Latin America (as opposed to other developing regions) has laid a strong foundation for the expansion into ESCR. The value of human rights is well understood by the public and advocacy groups and there exists a wealth of experience in using rights instruments. The OAS system has yet to take ESCR violations seriously, but the Commission has shown increasing interest and evolving instruments like the San Salvador Protocol on ESCR, and others concerning indigenous and women's rights, offer new hope for ESCR advocates.
• sympathetic government and Congressional leaders ESCR advocates are likely to find allies within the government branches, particularly Congress. Many governments are genuinely concerned about economic and social conditions and feel beleaguered by international pressures pushing for harsh adjustment measures. Under such conditions, ESCR may bolster government positions in front of multilateral banks, foreign governments and private industries. Congressional allies are likely to be particularly important given the budgetary issues and programmatic nature of these rights. There will always be sympathetic members of Congress eager for the legal and political support offered by ESCR advocates.
• The evolving international consensus around development priorities: International pressures driving harsh structural adjustment programs are losing their footing. ESCR advocacy should benefit from the emerging consensus around two basic rules: that social investment is essential for economic growth and that participation is both a right and a support to development. In the words of the World Bank President: “We must address the issues of long-term equitable growth on which prosperity and human progress depend. We must focus on the social issues. If we do not have equity and social justice.