Social Equity Matters and Human Rights

1. Social Equity Matters andHuman Rights Francois FarahChief,Social Development Division,ESCWA

2. How Are Human Rights Linked to Social Development?! Very many people across the world suffer from varieties of deprivation of freedom “UNFREEDOM” (Amartya Sen) • Famines • Mal or under nutrition • Poor access to health and sanitary arrangements or clean water • People spend their lives fighting unnecessary morbidity often succumbing to premature mortality

3. Lack of functional education or gainful employment • Lack of economic and social security • Inequality between women and men (Sen’s) Other forms of “unfreedom” • Many people are denied political liberty and basic civil rights • It is even claimed that denial of these rights helps to stimulate economic growth and is “good” for rapid economic development

4. The concept of development includes respect for all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural, as an inherent and constitutive part of development, not a contingent aspect, nor even an instrumental dimension • Rights are usually taken to be legal rights, with a corresponding duty or obligation attached to each right. Assertion of a right, therefore, implies casting a duty upon the state, from which it could not derogate, without being guilty of violating the right

5. This strict correspondence between right and duty, understandably, makes the state hesitant about encouraging the association of development with rights • The development community should therefore espouse a different conception of rights, rather than a legal conception of a one-to-one correspondence between rights and duties

6. Can Human Rights Be Met When: • Half the world's population lives below the two-dollar-a-day poverty line? • gross inequity, exclusion and deprivation is allowed to lead to state’s de-legitimization and to social disintegration, conflict, and violence? • Further growth and profitable investment deepen impoverishment and spread it within and across countries? (ex. Pakistan 1988-1998)

7. Inequality: A Clear Abuse of Human Rights Inequality has risen in the last decades: • Within countries • Among countries • This is the result of the choice of public policies with limited investments in social development and clear abuse of basic human rights

8. What Do the Statistics Tell Us? Indonesia: Sensitivity of poverty headcount (% people below poverty line) using different poverty lines Source: Based on SMERU and World Bank, 1996 Indonesia.

9. Evidence based research has now clearly shown that • The greater the inequality, the less the “trickle-down” effect and the more the abuse of human rights 2. Poverty and inequality inhibit growth, depress domestic demand, hinder national economic development and infringes on basic human rights for a decent living and for freedom from want

10. The Right To A “Fair Race” Example of 400 meter race People falling on the margins Abuse? Regulatory mechanisms Equal access to opportunity Equal access to basic social services Start off line

11. Social Policy: A Must Premise for Human Rights • well designed social programmes, can contribute to equitable productive development and therefore to upholding human rights • Social welfare institutions reduce sources of social tensions and extremisms and provide a more stable environment for shared decent living

12. Charity is a noble duty and is always welcome but it can at best temporarily ease up the suffering of a few individuals; Equitable social development can however enhance human dignity and curb the sheer structural distortions of biased policies and institutions that produce exclusion, marginalization, and vulnerability, a serious time threat for any protection, promotion or upholding of basic human rights for development

13. Thank You Social Development Division