When CESR wasestablished in 1993, the field of economic and social rights hadsuffered from decades of neglect, leaving few examples of effectiveadvocacy. Moreover, Cold War politics had created the false impressionthat economic and social rights were "aspirations" rather than rights,and impossible to measure or to enforce legally, and required massivegovernment expenditures.
Hadi Ghaemi (CESR Researcher) conducts an interview
in Herat, Afghanistan (Photo courtesy of Sarah Zaidi)
Today it can be demonstrated that economic and social rights arewell-established in international and constitutional laws. They havebeen enforced through court action, and are no more costly to implementthan traditional human rights such as the right to a fair trial. Yetthese legal advances have had limited impact impact on impoverishedpeople???s daily lives. From the outset CESR focused on developing a methodology to address inequality and power dynamics in real life situations.
Rather than reinvent the wheel, we drew on tested practices fromgroups in related fields. Through years of effort, development expertshave formulated numerous indicators for measuring social and economicinequalities; human rights organizations have focused public attentionon government abuses and advocated for policy change; environmental andwomen???s groups have organized effective coalitions to challengeinjustice at both the local and global levels; and grassroots activistshave worked inside communities to educate and mobilize people. Thesevarious successful approaches became the blueprint for CESR???s model of research, advocacy, collaboration, and education.
- research with a broad range of social scientists to document human rights violations.
- advocacy for legal accountability and promote policy change;
- collaboration with local groups to ensure that projects are driven by the concerns of affected communities; and
- education to raise public awareness of the human rights dimensions of poverty and inequality.
Effective economic and social rights work depends on all of theseelements working together. Multidisciplinary research exposes howdeliberate policy decisions in education, health, housing, and otherareas leave entire communities on the margins of survival. Advocacydemonstrates that these decisions are not just bad policy, but humanrights violations that must be challenged and can be changed.Collaboration mobilizes the full range of experience and expertiseneeded to remedy violations at the local and international levels. Andeducation enables affected communities to understand the root causes ofhuman rights violations are not just their failures but deep rootedbiases and built-in inequality, and they therefore take the lead indemanding change.
Over the years, CESR has refined itsmethodology through concrete economic and social rights projects in theMiddle East, Latin America, and the United States. While still anemerging field of practice, this new human rights framework has alreadyachieved tangible results and holds great promise for challenginginjustice around the world. For impact of our projects view advocacy bycountry section.
"The Center for Economic and Social Rights is developing anenormously imaginative and effective strategy for promoting economicand social rights that combines interdisciplinary scientific researchwith the support of grassroots organizations."
-- Scott Greathead, Lawyers Committee for Human Rights.