On January 3, 1976 — 50 years ago — the United Nations’ “International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights” entered into force with the backing of the Soviet Union and the Cold War “Non-Aligned Movement” (NAM). Intended to secure the “right” to housing, health care, fair wages, paid vacations, and other benefits globally, the International Covenant is a prime example of conflating rights with desires.
Thankfully, this socialist project, advanced under the banner of “human rights,” never became the law of the land in the United States. President Jimmy Carter signed the International Covenant at the UN headquarters in 1977, but it has since awaited ratification in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Cold War anxieties about the spread of socialism and communism may have hindered its acceptance among Congress and the public. However, 35 years after the Cold War, socialism is surging in popularity, especially among young Americans, and it’s important to reiterate the dangers of the UN’s International Covenant, lest it makes a comeback and the treaty is ratified.
Russell Kirk wrote that two “essential conditions” are attached to all true rights: first, the capacity of individuals to claim and exercise the alleged right; and second, the correspondent duty that is married to every right. The right to practice one’s religion freely involves a duty to respect others’ religious beliefs; the right to private property dovetails with the responsibility to not violate someone else’s possessions. Thus, true rights are mutually beneficial and reinforcing, undergirded by the virtues of justice and prudence.
What Kirk designated as “true rights” are synonymous with “natural rights” or “negative rights,” which are inherent in our nature and cannot be taken away. The only obligation they impose on others is to not infringe upon them. “Postive rights,” by contrast, require the individual to sacrifice portions of his earnings or potentially his life in the service of others, even against his own conscience and free will. One individual’s “positive right” to free health care, for example, violates another individual’s right to the fruits of his own labor. In short, one person’s desire becomes someone else’s obligation, and the former bears no responsibility while exercising his “right.”
The conflation between rights and desires — or negative rights and positive rights — was explicitly manifest in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” articulated in his 1941 State of the Union Address. “Freedom of speech” and “freedom of worship” are negative rights that may be exercised by individuals and secured by government, but “freedom from want” and “freedom from fear” are impossible to achieve — for “want” and “fear” are immutable aspects of the human condition. Our perpetual yearning for more than we presently possess, or our anxieties about future uncertainties, can never be entirely satisfied or relieved, even under the most healthy, safe, and prosperous conditions.
As Edmund Burke wrote, “The great Error of our Nature is, not to know where to stop, not to be satisfied with any reasonable Acquirement; not to compound with our Condition; but to lose all we have gained by an insatiable Pursuit after more.” The “great Error of our Nature” may impel us to demand unbridled resources from government, all in the pursuit of abstract “rights,” and therefore jeopardize the natural rights that are indispensable to a just social contract.
FDR’s “Four Freedoms” inspired the UN’s 1948 “Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” which affirms the “right” to rest and leisure. While these may be human needs and social goods that both public and private entities should respect, they ought not be framed as “rights.” Unlike freedom of speech and freedom of worship, rest and leisure are exercised without adjacent responsibilities and often require the provision of goods, services, or accommodations by others to be meaningful.
The International Covenant drastically expanded the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. No correspondent duties are associated with the “right” to the free and generous provisions championed by the UN, but instead require the burden and sacrifice of someone else’s labor and its fruits.
The treaty includes not only the “right” to rest and leisure, but also to an “adequate standard of living” and the “progressive introduction of free education.” It even declares the extremely vague “right” to “enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications.” There is no theoretical reason why such broad and elastic provisions cannot be extended to absurd proportions, where even non-essential consumer goods and vogue technologies like video game consoles or robot vacuum cleaners are labeled “human rights.”
The International Covenant and its advocacy of “economic, social and cultural rights” is contrary to America’s founding principles and the Western tradition of natural law. In accordance with the Declaration of Independence, Americans have a right to the “pursuit of happiness,” which governments are instituted to secure, along with the right to life and liberty. But the “right” to happiness itself cannot be reasonably justified by any appeal to the natural law.
The conflation of rights and desires is an impetus for the expansion of government power, which risks undermining the true rights most vulnerable to usurpation. As Andrew Cowin wrote in a 1993 Heritage Foundation report, the International Covenant “identified rights that were never meant to be granted. For decades, though, it gave Soviet totalitarian governments the cover that justified their accumulation of power and property.”
While Congress shelved the International Covenant and stopped its provisions from becoming American law, the treaty was ratified by many other countries, including US allies such as Japan, Mexico, France, Germany, and Italy.
If desires became “rights” in these capitalist democracies, the same could happen in America, which is why — on its 50th anniversary — we must remain vigilant against the UN’s International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
