AAAS Scientific Responsibility, Human Rights and Law Program

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Report on Science and Human Rights

Summer/Fall 2000 Vol XXI, No. 2

Conference in South Africa Examines Economic, Social, and Cultural Human Rights

On August 28 and 29, AAAS Science and Human Rights Program (SHR) staff attended a conference in Pretoria, South Africa, on “Exploring the Minimum Core Content of Economic and Social Rights.” The conference was co-sponsored and co-organized by SHR and the Centre for Human Rights of the University of Pretoria.

Economic and social rights hold a special place in South Africa. Although it has not yet ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (the Covenant), South Africa is virtually alone among countries in the world in enshrining key economic and social rights in its Constitution. Among the rights protected by the 1996 South African Constitution are basic education; an environment that is not harmful to human health or well-being; access to health care services, food, water, social security and housing; and certain labor and children’s rights.

Minimum core content, the theme of the conference, is a concept that was developed at the international level and adopted by the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (the Committee), the body that monitors states’ compliance with their obligations under the Covenant. It is a way to deal with the reality that full implementation of the rights in the Covenant requires resources that many states do not possess and cannot mobilize, either from within or outside their society. The Committee has stated that economic, social and cultural rights each contain fundamental or core elements. Full implementation of the right can be achieved gradually, over time, as resources permit. However, states have an immediate obligation to realize the minimum core content of economic, social and cultural rights and they are assumed to have the resources to do so. For example, universal, free primary education is commonly considered to be part of the minimum core content of the right to education, while secondary and university-level education are not.

The conference provided an in-depth look at seven rights in the Covenant that also appear in the South African Constitution: social security, trade union rights, children’s rights, housing, food, health and education. The right to work (Article 6 of the Covenant), was addressed as well, even though it is not included as such in the South African Constitution. However, important dimensions of the right to work, such as nondiscrimination, fair labor practices and protecting children against abusive labor conditions, are written into the Constitution.

SHR and HURIDOCS (Human Rights Information and Documentation Systems, International), a Geneva-based NGO, are engaged in a long-term project to develop tools and resources for monitoring violations of economic, social and cultural rights. One of the project’s first activities was to commission a series of papers from international experts on the individual rights in the Covenant. These papers sketch out the basis for each right in international law, delineate its basic scope and content, identify the minimum core obligations, and describe some common violations of the right.

These papers were the point of origin for the conference. The conference format consisted of paired presentations on each of the designated rights, from both the international and South African perspectives. Authors of eight of the papers commissioned by the AAAS/HURIDOCS ESCR project described the international dimensions of each right and identified the state’s minimum obligations. A South African expert on the same right then responded, placing the discussion of the right in a South African context.

The conference was attended by more than 100 representatives of government, NGOs and academic institutions. Recurring topics during the question and answer sessions included the concepts of minimum core obligations and minimum core content, the magnitude of the challenges facing South Africa in the immediate post-apartheid period, and the respective roles of government and an active and independent civil society in the realization of economic and social rights.

This conference did not resolve all the complex issues it raised. It gave them a thorough airing, though, and set the stage for future, more focused debates in South African on how to realize economic and social rights. The conference proceedings will be published in the first part of 2001.