Description
The 'respect, protect and fulfill' framework of state obligations for human rights is the most significant normative advancement over the past 50 years of the UN's efforts to realize socio-economic rights. However, the framework's historical origins, and particularly the political contexts behind these, remain underexplored. Based primarily on archival sources, complemented by a small number of elite interviews, this paper tracks the introduction of this framework into the UN system, especially through Asbjorn Eide's work on the right to food. At first glance, the historical record reveals a shift, from internationalist efforts to make radical changes to the global economic order—which had formed a key part of Eide's mandate as Special Rapporteur—to a narrower focus on states' domestic legal obligations. This was a wide-reaching success at demonstrating how socio-economic rights are as realizable as civil-political rights. But it sidelined the more radical demands of countries in the global South for fundamental structural change (the Right to Development). Instead of truly being a move from internationalism to statism about human rights, the paper ultimately uncovers a different dynamic, reaching a clear inflection point in 1989: the replacement of the 'political international' with the 'legal international' at the core of the human rights project.
