From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Economic, social and cultural rights
are a part of
human rights
. In an important
United Nations
treaty
called The
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
, the countries in the United Nations agreed that everyone should have these rights. Some examples of these rights include:
- The
right to education
(school)
- The right to
work
, with good pay, in a good, safe place to work
- The right to
strike
(when workers strike, they decide together that they will not work any more until their bosses make things at work better - like giving them enough pay to live on, or making the job safer)
- The
right to housing
- The right to
Social Security
- The
right to be healthy
- The right to an adequate standard of living
(meaning a person has everything they need to survive, including
water
,
food
,
clothing
, enough money to pay for what they need, and somewhere safe to live).
These rights were already listed in the United Nations'
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
. However, they were included again in the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights to ensure that giving people these rights would be the law worldwide.
A separate Covenant specifically on economic, social, and cultural rights was done for a reason. These rights were not included in the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
. These two Covenants were kept separate because
civil rights
are thought to be protected more strongly than economic, social and cultural rights. A separate Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights was done to make it clear how important these rights are.
As the
Vienna Declaration
says, all human rights must be protected equally because "all human rights are universal and cannot be divided."