Why are Economic, Social and Cultural rights (ESCR) often separated from Civil and Political rights (CPR)?
The Cold War, which did damage on many fronts, resulted in the rights which were treated as equal in the Universal Declaration being separated into two Covenants, one on Civil and Political Rights (seen as the strong suit of the West) and one on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (seen as the strong suit of the East). This division was greatly reinforced by Amnesty International’s — the best known human rights organization — decision to focus its work, for pragmatic reasons, exclusively on (a few) civil and political rights. The identification of human rights with only civil and political rights helped governments and organizations avoid challenging the inequality of economic and social arrangements in powerful nations as well as between those nations and the rest of the world. Larry Cox, Former Senior Program Officer Ford Foundation This Great Divide is to some degree a Cold War hand-me-down. In the market-driven, individualistic West, where all rights are individual, governments
