True Rights

Claudio Munoz of The Economist argues that human rights groups hamper themselves (and provide cover for dictatorships) by shifting their focus from political rights to social and economic "rights". via RCP.

"Food, jobs and housing are certainly necessities. But no useful purpose is served by calling them “rights”. When a government locks someone up without a fair trial, the victim, perpetrator and remedy are pretty clear. This clarity seldom applies to social and economic “rights”. It is hard enough to determine whether such a right has been infringed, let alone who should provide a remedy, or how."

By focusing more on these issues, rather than political ones, groups like Amnesty International, which once upon a time was pretty non-partisan and actually made an impact on the political stage, actually hurt their cause. Countries like Cuba, Sudan, Zimbabwe, etc. can safely ignore the political issues by stating they take care of the social ones - even if their citizens are starving in shacks and members of minority groups are routinely tortured, rotting in prisons, or simply disappear forever. Blurring the distinction between politcal issues like free speech and free healthcare ill serves progress on both, and it is the rights of citizens, practicing a free political process, that really gathers the focus of governments to the attention of all these other issues.