Vital for reforms

As chairperson of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in Geneva, I was extremely impressed and touched by the speech of Minister of Finance Umayya Toukan, delivered at the meeting of the Council of Arab Ministers of Finance recently held in the Kuwaiti capital.

The meeting was held on the sidelines of the annual joint meetings of Arab financial institutions and aimed to promote cooperation among Arab countries in the area of financial reforms.

Particularly eye-catching was Toukan’s call for paying attention to social justice when effecting financial policy reforms in the Arab world.

Seldom does one hear Arab officials refer to social rights when talking about financial and economic affairs.

Economic development takes the lion’s share of Arab concern, with some insignificant references issues like unemployment, poverty, housing and social security.

Toukan broke the ranks with traditional Arab stances, highlighting these rights as high priority issues.

We at the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights go out of our way to remind state parties, when their periodic reports are considered, to pay maximum attention to social rights in their financial and economic programmes and policies.

The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which entered into force in 1976, stipulates in one of its main preambular paragraphs that “the ideal of free human beings enjoying freedom from fear and want can only be achieved if conditions are created whereby everyone may enjoy his [or her] economic, social and cultural rights, as well as his [or her] civil and political rights”.

The first article of the covenant says that “all peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development”.

When the committee considers state reports on periodic basis, the first concern is what is now referred to as the “justiciability” of the economic, social and cultural rights set out in the covenant.

This means that individuals living in any of the state parties can invoke these rights in a court of law and push for their incorporation in their respective countries’ plans of action for economic development and financial policies.

These rights include the end of all forms of discrimination, gender equality, the enjoyment of the right to work and earn minimum wages that are sufficient to provide workers and their families with a decent standard of living, the enjoyment of the right to education, health, housing and social insurance, as well as cultural rights.

Given the fact that radicalism and terrorism grow and flourish in an environment that denies social justice, it is imperative to accord social justice prominent status in any government’s economic and financial policies and practices. 

The minister’s words about the urgent need for social justice should be heeded and governments in the region should act accordingly.