ABSTRACT
The premise that has been used throughout this book is that general obligations pertaining to human rights are largely the same whether one deals with civil and political rights, or with economic, social and cultural rights. It has been established that the various levels of obligations can be divided into groups of respect, protect, and fulfil. Despite the difference in origins, the two sets of rights were included on an equal footing in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and although the human rights listed in the Universal Declaration were divided into two separate international covenants for their legally binding codification, these were both adopted through normal procedures of creating international law. Implementation of human rights since 1948, and the developments in international human rights theory, show that the rigid understanding of different obligations related to civil and political rights, on the one hand, and economic, social and cultural rights on the other, does not reflect reality.1 It has been demonstrated that although some of the civil and political rights may be respected through noninterference in certain circumstances, it is quite obvious that a number of these rights require positive action on part of the government to ensure them.2 For instance, the Human Rights Committee has in its general comment on the right to life (Art 6 of the Civil and Political Rights Covenant) stated that this right has:
This opinion is supported by the wording of Art 2 of the Civil and Political Rights Covenant, which makes it clear that the States Parties to the Covenant undertake to ‘respect and to ensure’ (my emphasis) the rights recognised in that Covenant. In its General Comment on Art 2, the Human Rights Committee states that:
It is therefore considered that the obligations pertaining to civil and political rights exceed the non-interference aspects.
