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	We need to reclaim the UDHR''s vision of Global Economic Justice by Adam Parsons Share the World''s Resources   That thousands of people die daily from poverty-related causes, while the number of chronically undernourished people increases, is an affront to the very idea that everyone has the right to an adequate standard of living.   What are the political implications of meeting the established human right for everyone to enjoy an adequate standard of living? In short, it necessitates a redistribution of wealth and resources on an unprecedented scale, which is why activists should resurrect the United Nations’ radical vision for achieving Article 25.   The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is one of the most translated and celebrated documents in the world, marking its 70th anniversary this year. But relatively few people are aware of the significance of its 25th Article, which proclaims the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living—including food, housing, healthcare, social services and basic financial security.   As our campaign group Share The World’s Resources (STWR) has long proposed, it is high time that activists for global justice reclaim the vision that is spelled out in those few simple sentences. For in order to implement Article 25 into a set of binding, enforceable obligations through domestic and international laws, the implications are potentially revolutionary.   Since the Universal Declaration was adopted by the General Assembly in 1948, the United Nations never promised to do anything more than “promote” and “encourage respect for” human rights, without explicit legal force. The Universal Declaration may form part of so-called binding customary international law, laying out a value-based framework that can be used to exert moral pressure on governments who violate any of its articles. But in the past 70 years, no government has seriously attempted to adapt its behavior in line with the Declaration’s far-reaching requirements.   While civil and political rights have enjoyed an increasing degree of implementation throughout the world, the historical record on economic and social rights is far less sanguine. This is forcefully illustrated by the U.N.’s current Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston. In his first report submitted to the Human Rights Council, he argued that economic and social rights are marginalized in most contexts, without proper legal recognition and accountability mechanisms in place. Indeed, he even questioned the extent to which states treat them as human rights at all, and not just desirable long-term goals.   Even many of the states that enjoy the world’s highest living standards have disregarded proposals to recognize these rights in legislative or constitutional form. Most of all, the United States has persistently rejected the idea that economic and social rights are full-fledged human rights, in the sense of “rights” that might be amenable to any method of enforcement. It is the only developed country to insist that, in effect, its government has no obligation to safeguard the rights of citizens to jobs, housing, education, and an adequate standard of living.   In their defense, governments may point out the historical progress made in reducing extreme poverty across the world, which has generally been achieved without adopting a strategy based on the full recognition of economic and social rights. But the extent to which these rights remain unmet for millions of people today is unconscionable from any kind of moral perspective. Consider that more than 60 percent of the world population struggles to live on less than $5 per day, an amount which the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has considered the minimum daily income which could reasonably be regarded as fulfilling the right to “a standard of living adequate for...health and well-being,” as stipulated in Article 25.   The International Labor Organization of the United Nations also estimates that only 27 percent of people worldwide have access to comprehensive social security systems, despite almost every government recognizing the fundamental right to social security, as also enshrined in Article 25.   The fact that many thousands of people continue to die each day from poverty-related causes, while the number of chronically undernourished people increases once again, is an affront to the very idea that everyone has the right to an adequate standard of living.   Even in the most affluent nations, millions of people lack access to the financial system, struggle to pay for food or utilities and die prematurely. Across the European Union, for example, one in four people are experiencing income poverty, severe material deprivation, and/or social exclusion. There is no country which has secured fundamental socioeconomic rights for the entire population, including the generous welfare states of Scandinavia that are also being gradually eroded by market-driven policies.   Such facts demonstrate how far we have strayed from realizing the modest aspiration expressed in Article 25. The challenge is well recognized by civil society groups that advocate for a new direction in economic policymaking, beginning with a reversal of the austerity measures that are now expected to affect nearly 80 percent of the global population within a couple of years.   Rendering Article 25 into a truly “indivisible,” “inalienable,” and “universal” human right would also mean, inter alia, reforming unfair tax policies that undermine the capacity of countries to invest in universal social protection systems. It would mean rolling back the wave of commercialization that is increasingly entering the health sector and other essential public services, with extremely negative consequences for human wellbeing.   It would also demand regulatory oversight to hold the out-of-control finance sector to account, as well as domestic legislative action in support of a living wage and core labor rights.   In short, implementing Article 25 would call for a redistribution of wealth, power, and income on an unprecedented scale within and between every society, in contradistinction to the prevailing economic ideology of our time—an ideology that falsely views economic and social rights as inimical to “wealth creation,” “economic growth,” and “international competitiveness.”   This only serves to underline the enormous political implications of achieving Article 25. For it is clear that rich countries prefer to extract wealth from the global South, rather than share their wealth in any meaningful way through a redistribution of resources. Yet we know the resources are available, if government priorities are fundamentally reoriented toward safeguarding the basic needs of all peoples everywhere.   To be sure, just a fraction of the amount spent on a recent U.S. arms deal with Saudi Arabia, estimated at over $110 billion, would be enough to lift everyone above the extreme poverty line as defined by the World Bank. If concerted action was taken by the international community to phase out tax havens and prevent tax dodging by large corporations, then developing countries could recover trillions of dollars each year for human rights protection and spending on public services.   Fulfilling the common people’s dream of “freedom from fear and want,” therefore, is not about merely upscaling aid as a form of charity; it is about the kind of systemic transformations that are necessary for everyone to enjoy dignified lives in more equal societies with economic justice.   These are just some of the reasons why the human rights of Article 25, however simply worded and unassuming, hold the potential to revolutionize the unfair structures and rules of our unequal world. Because if those rights are vociferously advocated by enough of the world’s people, there is no estimating the political transformations that would unfold. That is why STWR calls on global activists to jointly herald Article 25 through massive and continual demonstrations in all countries, as set out in our flagship publication.   The U.N. Charter famously invokes “We the Peoples,” but it is up to us to resurrect the U.N.’s founding ideal of promoting social progress and better standards of life for everyone in the world. It is high time we seized upon Article 25 and reclaimed its stipulations as “a law of the will of the people,” until governments finally begin to take seriously the full realisation of their pledge set forth in the Universal Declaration. http://bit.ly/2MAwyxX   http://www.sharing.org/information-centre/articles/squeezing-state-corporate-influence-over-tax-policy-and-repercussions Visit the related web page
	Venezuela: Economic Crisis deepens - Urgent Measures needed to address shortages of Medicine, Food by Human Rights Watch   The Venezuelan government has targeted critics of its ineffective efforts to alleviate severe shortages of essential medicines and food while the crisis persists, Human Rights Watch said in a new report. Regional governments should press the administration of President Nicolás Maduro to adopt immediate measures to better address the profound humanitarian crisis, including by exploring avenues for increased international assistance.   The 78-page report, “Venezuela’s Humanitarian Crisis: Severe Medical and Food Shortages, Inadequate and Repressive Government Response,” documents how the shortages have made it extremely difficult for many Venezuelans to obtain essential medical care or meet their families’ basic needs.   The Venezuelan government has downplayed the severity of the crisis. Although its own efforts to alleviate the shortages have not succeeded, it has made only limited efforts to obtain international humanitarian assistance that might be readily available. Meanwhile, it has intimidated and punished critics, including health professionals, human rights defenders, and ordinary Venezuelans who have spoken out about the shortages.   “The Venezuelan government has seemed more vigorous in denying the existence of a humanitarian crisis than in working to resolve it,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “Its failures have contributed to the suffering of many Venezuelans who now struggle every day to obtain access to basic health care and adequate nutrition.”   The Venezuelan government has stridently denied that the shortages rise to the level of a crisis. When officials have acknowledged the shortages at all, they have blamed them on an “economic war” waged by the political opposition, the private sector, and foreign powers. The government has provided no evidence to support these accusations.   Human Rights Watch interviewed more than 100 people about the humanitarian situation in June 2016, in Caracas, the capital, and six states – Aragua, Carabobo, Lara, Táchira, Trujillo, and Zulia – and followed up by phone and other media. Researchers visited eight public hospitals, a health center on the border with Colombia, and a foundation that provides health care.   Human Rights Watch interviewed people lined up at several locations to try to buy price-controlled goods as well as health care providers, people seeking medical care, people who had been detained in connection with protests linked to the shortages, human rights defenders, and public health experts.   Shortages of basic medicines and other crucial medical supplies have caused a sharp deterioration in the quality and safety of care over the past two years, Human Rights Watch found. Doctors and patients reported severe shortages – and in some cases, the complete absence – of basic medicines such as antibiotics and painkillers. Supplies lacking or in short supply in public hospitals included sterile gloves, gauze, and medical alcohol.   An August 2016 survey by a network of more than 200 doctors found that 76 percent of the public hospitals where they worked lacked the basic medicines that the network said should be available in any functional public hospital.   In case after case, people facing emergencies and those with chronic medical conditions such as cancer, hypertension, diabetes, and epilepsy, as well as organ transplant patients, said they struggle to find essential medications. The medicines are often unavailable at both public and private pharmacies, are prohibitively expensive if purchased abroad, and are either unavailable or so expensive on the black market – where they also come with no quality guarantees – as to be virtually unobtainable.   The “distress and uncertainty is a daily nightmare,” the mother of a 9-year-old girl with diabetes said about her efforts to find the medicines her daughter needs.   The maternal mortality rate for the first five months of 2016 reported by the Health Ministry was 79 percent higher than the latest available official figures, from 2009. The infant mortality rate was 45 percent higher than 2013 figures. Health professionals told Human Rights Watch that medical shortages and unhygienic conditions in hospital delivery wards are important contributing factors.   Many Venezuelans are finding it increasingly difficult to get adequate nutrition, Human Rights Watch found, particularly lower or middle-income families who rely on items subject to government price controls. Some markets have food and even luxury goods available but at prices that many people cannot afford.   Human Rights Watch researchers found long lines forming whenever supermarkets received goods subject to price controls. People waiting in lines said they were trying to buy items such as rice, pasta, flour, diapers, toothpaste, and toilet paper. Supermarkets often ran out of limited stock long before everyone in line had been served.   In a 2015 survey by independent groups and two leading Venezuelan universities, 87 percent of 1,488 people interviewed in 21 cities throughout the country, most from low-income families, said they had difficulty purchasing food. Twelve percent said they ate only one or two meals a day.   Public health scholars have linked food insecurity in diverse Latin American countries with major physical and mental health problems among adults, and poor growth and socio-emotional and cognitive development in children. In Venezuela, several doctors, community members, and parents told Human Rights Watch that they were beginning to see symptoms of malnutrition, particularly in children.   The government’s narrative of “economic war” has provided a rationale for using authoritarian tactics to intimidate and punish critics. It has lashed out at medical professionals who express concern about shortages, threatening to remove them from their positions at public hospitals. It has threatened to cut off the international funding of human rights organizations. And it has responded both to planned marches and spontaneous demonstrations about shortages with severe beatings, detention, and unjustifiable prohibitions on protests.   Some people have been prosecuted in military courts, in violation of their right to a fair trial.   The Venezuelan government should take immediate and urgent steps to articulate and carry out effective policies to address the crisis, including by seeking international humanitarian aid, Human Rights Watch said. It should stop intimidating and punishing critics. Member countries of the Organization of American States should maintain close and continuous oversight of the situation, until the Venezuelan government shows results addressing the political and humanitarian crisis. United Nations humanitarian agencies should publish an independent assessment of the extent and impact of the shortages, as well as what is needed to address them.   “Without strong international pressure, in particular from the region, the Maduro administration may well fail to do what is necessary to alleviate this crisis, and the dramatic consequences of the humanitarian crisis that Venezuela is facing may only get worse,” Vivanco said.   http://bit.ly/2e4sHrB http://bit.ly/29IT9ID http://www.hrw.org/news/2016/08/08/venezuelas-deepening-crisis Visit the related web page
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