wfn.org | CWSW: Human Rights Include Economic, Social

[CAROL_FOUKE.parti@ecunet.org (CAROL FOUKE)]

National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA
Contact: NCC News, 212-870-2227
Internet: news@ncccusa.org

NCC3/20/98           FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CWS AFFIRMS ECONOMIC, SOCIAL RIGHTS AS CRUCIAL HUMAN 
RIGHTS

SAN FRANCISCO, March 19 -- Fifty years after the 
adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a 
national campaign is seeking to redress the ways in 
which the United States has ignored economic and social 
rights, crucial parts of the 1948 declaration.

Speaking during the final day (March 19) of the 
Church World Service and Witness Unit Committee meeting 
here, Anuradha Mittal, coordinator of the "Economic 
Human Rights: The Time Has Come!" campaign, said the 
United States has integrated the language of "human 
rights" into its international diplomacy and politics.

But the United States has also chosen to overlook 
that the original document, signed following the Second 
World War by the newly created United Nations, 
proclaimed the interdependence and indivisibility of 
civil,-political and economic social rights.

The "The Time Has Come!" campaign, consisting of more 
than 170 U.S. grass-roots organizations, has mobilized 
activists to promote a full range of human rights that 
includes freedom from poverty and hunger.

"Poverty, sickness and illiteracy undermine human 
dignity as effectively as military thugs," said Mittal, 
who is also policy director of the San Francisco-based 
Institute for Food and Development Policy -- Food First. 

Church World Service, the humanitarian assistance 
ministry of the National Council of Churches, is 
supporting the "The Time Has Come!" campaign.  The 
campaign is seeking to make economic human rights "an 
explicit goal for the United States," Mittal said. "We 
want to go beyond a mere 50-year celebration of the 
Universal Declaration."
 
While the United States supported the 1948 
Declaration, it has since rejected a series of other 
declarations. At a 1996 international housing rights 
conference in Istanbul, the United States was the sole 
nation that rejected the right of housing as a 
fundamental right.  And at the World Food Summit in Rome 
the same year, the United States "stood alone in 
refusing to recognize the right to food," Mittal said.

"Is it coincidental that the only industrialized 
country to reject those economic and social rights also 
boasts the highest disparity between the rich and the 
poor, and the highest child poverty rates among the 
industrialized countries?" she asked.  "Every statistic 
represents a personal tragedy and a political calamity.  
It shows starkly how far the United States has fallen 
short of its commitments under the Universal 
Declaration."

The "The Time Has Come" campaign, which has mobilized 
human rights, labor and social activists, as well as 
faith-based organizations, has organized ad hoc 
congressional hearings by the Congressional Progressive 
Caucus on the human rights implications of increasing 
poverty and hunger. The first scheduled hearings are 
planned May 2 in Oakland, Calif. Further hearings are 
tentatively scheduled in September in Washington, D.C.

The National Council of Churches 1997 General 
Assembly, meeting in November, voted unanimously to 
sponsor observances of the 50th anniversary of the 
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and called on the 
U.S. government to reaffirm its commitment to universal 
human rights.

The Assembly called on the Council's units and member 
communions to celebrate 1998 as Universal Human Rights 
Year.  It urged the U.S. government to work toward 
ratification and implementation of several other human 
rights documents including those dealing with the rights 
of women and children.

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