History

Some brief highlights of CESR’s past work

Established in 1993 by recent graduate students (two lawyers and a scientist) from Harvard University, CESR has gone through several evolutionary phases during its ten-plus years, in response both to organizational imperatives and to developments in the larger field.

During the initial phase from 1993-96, the founders' overriding concern was to undertake comprehensive research and advocacy projects designed to demonstrate the viability and effectiveness of an economic and social rights practice. At the time, there were very few precedents and models, in part because of legal and methodological misconceptions that developed within the human rights field during the polarizing atmosphere of the Cold War. We tackled this on two fronts. First, we undertook direct project work starting with a project on health and environment in Ecuador. Second, CESR convened a set of discussions and workshops with human rights, development, and social justice groups aimed at challenging the conceptual framework that viewed economic and social rights as difficult and downright impossible.

In this initial phase, CESR was able to contribute to a fundamental rethinking in the human rights community about the need to return to the interdependent vision of all human rights established in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

From 1997-2000, CESR consolidated its project work within regionally-based projects in Latin America, the Middle East, and the United States. We established offices in Latin America which after a few years emerged as a leading voice on economic and social rights in the region. Our sister organization based in Quito, the Centro de Derechos Economicos y Sociales, is now independently established with local staff and an international board. Our effort to establish a similar CESR office in Gaza was eventually abandoned as it became difficult to obtain necessary legal permits. We worked with local human rights activists to develop programs in economic and social rights and assisted in establishing a women's rights organization, Mashraqiyat.

During this period, and coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a wide range of groups began to broaden their mandate. Prominent organizations that historically had only addressed civil and political rights, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, or relief and development, such as Oxfam International and CARE, began to incorporate economic and social rights into their work and mission. Similarly, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, mandated that United Nations and its agencies mainstream human rights into their programming. CESR devoted significant resources to building relations with these groups through consultations, coalition-building, and networking.

Since 1998, CESR has held a series of strategic meetings to define its role in building a constituency-based human rights movement focused on eliminating poverty and economic exploitation. This comes at a time when global networks and social movements are increasingly turning to economic and social rights as a common framework to support their advocacy, share strategies, and develop solidarity. CESR partnered with economic and social rights activists to establish the International Network on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ESCR-Net). A recent milestone was its successful launch in Chiang Mai in June 2003. Parallel growth in the domestic sphere can be seen in the formation of the economic and social rights networks in the United States. CESR also focuses on addressing gender inequality through the Women's Economic Equality Project.