The influence of human rights classifications in the enforcement of economic, social and cultural rights

Abstract

This paper examines how the accepted classifications on Human Rights influence the enforceability of the economic, social and cultural rights. Existing assertions about how difficult is to enforce those rights have their origin in various issues, like the lack of a graspable and clear concept, the apparent theoretical contradictions between equality and freedom, or the difficulty to design effective mechanisms to enforce the claims. It is a fact that social rights still lack effectiveness. This deficiency has led theorists, especially liberals, to question their fundamentality from various fields, which have led to attack even the reasons that give them sustenance. From a legal perspective it is necessary to characterize the social rights since that is the starting point to achieve better levels of understanding and enforcement. However, this approach almost always develops from a certain classification of rights that, far from helping to strengthen the social rights enforcement, rather weakens and even detriments them.