International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) in Article 3
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/27
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) was adopted, and so legitimized, through the United Nations General Assembly on December 16th, 1966. After ten years or so, all Member States of the United Nations became parties of the covenant. That remained the plan or projection, or extrapolation, as the case may be.
As it turns out, the document had the sufficient Member States in 1976 – tens years after 1966 or its adoption by the UN General Assembly – and became active as planned in 1976. The United States Senate ratified the ICCPR in June of 1992 with some exceptions to the treaty. Some of those included that the treaty will not be enforceable in the courts of the United States.
The introduction states, “Thus the United States Senate denied Americans the legal power to secure and enforce the human rights recognized by this international covenant.”
That is, the document may be enforced in the other Member States but most definitely not in the United States of America. With the social and legal and cultural and political equality of men and women on the international agenda more, especially with the rising inequality, nationalism, and authoritarianism, and outright sexism by secular and religious groups around the world, this document becomes ever-more important.
It becomes important with the civil and political rights rather than reproductive rights, which become different when in consideration of men and women, and trans-men and trans-women, e.g. in the cases of abortions and birth control provisions and the implications for men and women and some trans-men and some trans-women. Civil and political rights seem relatively straightforward as rights afforded in civil society and political life of the nation.
The main article from this document with direct relevance is Article 3, which talks about “The States Parties to the present Covenant undertake to ensure the equal right of men and women to the enjoyment of all civil and political rights set forth in the present Covenant.” It is straightforward and in contradistinction to the obvious current treatments of men and women the world over in terms of rights.
When international and civil society organizations argue for human rights, and speak about the current inequality the rights of men and women, they speak with authority and in line with the documentation adopted by the United Nations decades and decades ago. Our parents’ generations were kids when this was ongoing.
In the denial of the right for women to drive, or the Guardianship laws grounded in culture and the Islamic faith fundamentalist interpretations, the retraction of equal rights in law, the restriction in the right to vote, to marry, to have a marriage with full adult consent, and so on, the various conventions and documents, such as this one – and especially in Article 3, continue to be violated.
They remain some of the stronges tools in Canada and elsewhere to argue for the full equal rights of men and women in civil and political life. We should use them to full force regardless if people use distractions, emotional appeals, logical fallacies, or force to deny said equality. We owe this to women; we owe this to men.
We are in a moment of minor retractions. Let’s change that.
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One can find similar statements in other documents, conventions, declarations and so on. Based on the personal analysis in conjunction with a colleague (Sarah Mills) in other publications, I find the following documents with the subsequent statements of equality or women’s rights:
- The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the Preamble, Article 16, and Article 25(2).
- Convention Against Discrimination in Education (1960) in Article 1.
- The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) in Article 3 and Article 13.
- The Istanbul Convention in Article 38 and Article 39.
- Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
- The Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women(1993).
- Beijing Declaration(1995).
- United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000).
- Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (2000).
- The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa or the “Maputo Protocol” (2003).
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