Civil and Political Rights

Since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the discourse of international human rights and its importance has increasingly become indoctrinated in the international community. In the context of political and economic development, there have been debates on how and which rights should be ordered and protected throughout different cultures and communities. Though there is a general acceptance of international human rights around the globe, there is an approach that divides them into civil and political rights and social and economic rights, which puts emphasis where it need not be.

Civil and Political rights are catalogued as those that protect individual freedoms from infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensures one’s ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repressions . Economic, Social and Cultural rights are those that allow people to meet basic human survival and socioeconomic necessities such as; rights at work, right to education, right to housing, right to adequate standard of living, right to health and right to food, and cultural rights of minorities and indigenous people. The desire to dichotomize these two subcomponents of rights is flawed and potentially creates an idea that one dominates the other in global importance of human rights, which is problematic when considering human dignity.

The UDHR was adopted in 1948, however in 1966 the division of these rights materialized under two documents; the International Covenant on Economic and Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The foundation of the separation of civil/political and economic and social rights can be s...

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... these two sets of rights and the distinction and focusing on the integration and how they can work to protect rights of individuals seems to be more relevant.

The intertwining of sets of human rights needs to be the reality when enjoying rights; those who don’t have the basic/positive rights of education cannot take part in political rights or exercise rights such as freedom of expression. On the other hand situations in developing countries such as famine are less likely to occur when there is the ability to exercise political rights and the right to vote. The international community along with experts and academia need to put forward debates on and bring new ideas to the conversation of the interlacing of civil and political and social and economic rights to dissolve this false dichotomy that are putting limits and constraints on the protections of individuals.