"Economic and Social Rights, 1945-2000: A Political History"

Economic and Social Rights were vital to the post-1945 evolution of international human rights. The project sheds new light on their global importance.

Purpose

The 1945 UN Charter placed human rights in the context of international peace and security. Economic and social rights were an integrated part of this framing but their place and relevance in the international human rights framework have continually been contested. In the first decades after 1945, an era when human rights evolved from non-binding norms into international law, economic and social rights evolved in parallel to civil and political rights. From the mid-1970s the two sets of rights embarked on very different trajectories as a result of international politics, transformations in the international state system and the human rights dynamics of the era.

The lack of historical scholarship on economic and social rights not only represents a gap in international research, but points to more fundamental imbalances with implications for shaping present and future debates on global politics. This project will address this imbalance in international human rights research and practice by refining the scholarship on these rights. More specifically, it will explore questions such as:

What role have economic and social rights played in international politics after 1945?

How did economic and social rights contribute to the evolution of the international human rights framework?

How were economic and social rights used in key international and domestic political debates on equality, non-discrimination, poverty, freedom and justice after 1945?

An international research network “Socioeconomic Rights in History” has been established involving researchers from universities in the UK, US, France, Germany, Switzerland and the Danish Institute for Human Rights.

Research funding

The Danish Research Council