Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
Economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR) relate to the conditions necessary to meet basic human needs such as food, shelter, education, health care, and gainful employment. They include the rights to education, adequate housing, food, water, the highest attainable standard of health, the right to work and rights at work, as well as the cultural rights of minorities and indigenous peoples.
Poverty is not inevitable. 'Everybody has the right to a standard of living, adequate for health and wellbeing... including food, clothing, housing, medical care and necessary social services.' Article 25 - Universal Declaration of Human Rights
HUMAN RIGHTS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY:
A Primer on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
The state of global malnutrition, child mortality and lack of access to even primary education constitutes a human rights scandal of shocking proportions, one to which we must respond. Learn more in Human Rights for Human Dignity, the first Amnesty International publication of its kind on economic, social and cultural rights.
» Read on
Human Rights Goals
AI's primary goals for work on ESCR include:
INVESTIGATING abuses of economic, social and cultural rights. Amnesty's first groundbreaking reports in this area examine forced evictions and housing rights in Angola, the right to food in North Korea, the right to work in Israel/Occupied Territories, and more.
STRENGTHENING the legal recognition of economic, social and cultural rights, including by campaigning for a new international complaint mechanism to provide victims of economic, social and cultural rights violations with an international remedy.
DEMANDING justice for individuals, families and communities who face discrimination and abuses of their economic, social and cultural rights.
» Sign up for Urgent Actions on cases involving ESCR abuses
CAMPAIGNING for economic, social and cultural rights to be recognized in decisions related to trade, resources, finances and the environment, and to hold both state and non-state actors accountable for abuses of these rights.
In Little Buffalo, Alberta, Canada, the Lubicon Cree indigenous people have been battling for three decades for the right to control their lands and hold to account the oil, gas and logging companies that have devastated their environment.
