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gions, are adequately nourished, and so on.
This approach misses something important. One can sometimes speak freely
even if there is no specific freedom of speech; one can be employed even if there
is no right to employment; one can obtain adequate food even if there is no right
to adequate food. It is important to know whether the human rights that we all
have are translated into hard local rights in the form of specific entitlements and
commitments.
All people have all human rights described in the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights and the two covenants. That is, they have all human rights in prin-
ciple. But one must also ask about practice. Are those rights recognized in local
law and given practical e’ect? Where governments take human rights seriously,
there are laws and institutional arrangements to ensure their realization.
If you want to know whether people have a particular legal right locally, you
look at the law. The first place to look is national law, but it could also show up in
the law at lower levels for example, provincial law or state law in federal sys-
tems, such as those of India and the United States.
If you want to know whether the right is realized which is a di’erent ques-
tion you look at how people are living, and compare that with the law. To illus-
trate, Humana asked whether everyone has the right to freedom of movement
and residence within the borders of each state in each country of the world (Hu-
mana 1992). He should have distinguished two di’erent questions: Does the
country have that right clearly enshrined in national law? And if it does, is the
right fully realized by all of its people? Assessing the extent to which a goal is re-
alized means assessing not simply a status (e.g., numbers of children who are
rights and entitlements 97
malnourished), but the degree of shortfall from achievement of an explicitly
identified goal.
It is important to distinguish between, say, speaking freely and having a right
to free speech, or between having adequate food and having a right to adequate
food. To draw an analogy, you cannot tell how much protection people have
against fire by asking people if their houses are on fire at the moment. To assess
the quality of the protection, one has to look into the institutional arrangements
that are in place, ready to act if and when disaster threatens. The human right to
adequate food requires action by government to protect against the occurrence of
inadequacy and to remedy it if it does occur. Drawing on the distinction made in
chapter 1, the right is about food security, not just current food status. The real-
ization of the human right to adequate food requires appropriate institutional
arrangements to ensure that people have adequate food now and can expect to
have it in the foreseeable future.
The fact that most people in any given country are well fed tells us nothing
about the situation of marginalized people, and it says nothing about what might
happen in the future if wealth declines or government priorities change. In the
United States, for example, most people have adequate food, and there are major
programs to help needy people obtain food, but there is nothing in national law
that establishes a national right to adequate food.
National legislation is not required to ensure that people have particular
rights. Human rights are universal by definition. Thus, children in Somalia
and the United States have all the rights enumerated in the Convention on the
Rights of the Child. The fact that their governments have not ratified the con-
vention only means that their governments have not made a commitment to en-
sure the realization of those rights. Ratifying human rights agreements, and fol-
lowing up with appropriate national legislation, are strong signs of a nation s
commitment to their realization. Appropriate national legislation increases the
likelihood of the realization of particular human rights.
chapter 6
Obligations and Commitments
Moral Responsibilities
Before examining the character of obligations with regard to human rights, it
is useful to establish a framework for understanding moral responsibilities. In
some ways, all of us are vulnerable. We face threats to our families, our freedoms,
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