ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to demonstrate how, by recognising economic, social and cultural rights (ESCRs) the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) laid the groundwork for transforming our understanding of human rights. It provides an overview of the manner in which the UDHR protects ESCRs and addresses its central concern by focusing on two broad themes. The chapter examines how the jurisprudence on ESCRs has helped change the debate about the nature of human rights obligations and duty bearers and brought us back on a path the UDHR had marked. It explores how the practice of international human rights bodies has over the same period changed the conception of the implementation and enforcement of human rights to underline the UDHR's commitment to the indivisibility, interdependence and interrelatedness of all human rights. By 1948, ESCRs had not yet been universally accepted as legal rights worthy of recognition on par with civil and political rights.
