“Everyone as a member of the society has the right to social security, and is entitled to realization through national efforts and international cooperation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each state of economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and free development of his personality.” This statement which is emphasizing the importance of social security has been expressed in which of the following?

Correct — A, (a) Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The passage quoted in the stem is Article 22 of the Universal Declaration, which the United Nations General Assembly adopted on 10 December 1948. The Declaration’s own text reads: ’Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.’ The booklet reproduces it with a few small slips of wording — ’a member of the society’, ’national efforts and international cooperation’, and ’each state of economic, social and cultural rights’ — but every distinctive element of Article 22 is there, and no other document says these things in this order.

Three of those elements identify the source almost by themselves. First, ’Everyone’: the Declaration speaks of every human being, not of workers, which is what marks it off from an instrument of labour law. Second, the pairing of ’national efforts’ with ’international cooperation’ and the qualification ’in accordance with the organization and resources of each state’ — the Declaration was drafted for states at very different levels of development and had to promise a right without promising an identical standard of provision. Third, the closing phrase, ’his dignity and free development of his personality’, which is the Declaration’s characteristic idiom and recurs in it.

Article 22 matters to anyone administering social security because it is the point at which social security stops being a policy choice and becomes a human right. Article 25 of the same Declaration completes the thought on the substantive side, giving everyone the right to a standard of living adequate for health and well-being and to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood and old age. The International Labour Organisation carried the idea into a binding standard eight years later in the Social Security (Minimum Standards) Convention, 1952, Convention No. 102, and Indian social security legislation — the Employees’ State Insurance Act, 1948, the Employees’ Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952 and their successors — is the domestic form of the same commitment.

Why the others are wrong

• (b)Philadelphia Declaration of the ILO — The Declaration of Philadelphia was adopted by the International Labour Conference at its twenty-sixth session in Philadelphia on 10 May 1944 and annexed to the ILO Constitution in 1946, and it is a genuine landmark in social security thinking — it obliges the Organisation to further programmes achieving ’the extension of social security measures to provide a basic income to all in need of such protection and comprehensive medical care’. But its voice is different from the quoted passage in two ways that decide the item. It speaks in the register of an organisation’s aims and purposes rather than of individual rights, and its subject is labour: its famous first principle is that labour is not a commodity. The quoted passage begins with ’Everyone as a member of the society’ and speaks of dignity and the development of personality, which is the language of a human rights instrument, not of a labour charter. This paper asks about the Philadelphia Declaration elsewhere in the same labour run, so the two are worth holding apart deliberately.
• (c)Report of the First National Commission on Labour — The First National Commission on Labour was set up on 24 December 1966 under the chairmanship of Justice P. B. Gajendragadkar and submitted its report in August 1969. Its subject was Indian industrial relations and labour policy — wages, industrial relations machinery, trade unions, unorganised labour — and it wrote as a domestic body making recommendations to the Government of India. Nothing in the quoted passage is domestic: there is no reference to India, to industry, to employment or to any Indian institution, and the phrase ’each state’ presupposes many states. A national commission does not write in that voice.
• (d)Directive Principles of State Policy of the Indian Constitution — The Directive Principles are the nearest Indian analogue of what the passage says, which is what makes this the most attractive wrong answer. Article 41 directs the State to make effective provision for securing the right to work, to education and to public assistance in cases of unemployment, old age, sickness and disablement; Article 42 requires provision for just and humane conditions of work and for maternity relief; Article 43 speaks of a living wage and a decent standard of life. But the language is quite different. Part IV of the Constitution addresses the State and tells it what to endeavour to secure ’within the limits of its economic capacity and development’; it does not say that everyone ’has the right’. The quoted passage confers a right on every person and speaks of international cooperation and of each state, none of which belongs in a national constitution’s directive principles.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948 by resolution 217 A (III), and its thirty articles fall into recognisable groups: civil and political rights in the earlier articles, and economic, social and cultural rights from Article 22 onwards. Article 22 is the hinge. It states the right to social security and, importantly, states the terms on which it is to be realised — through national effort and international co-operation, and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State. That qualification is what allowed states of very unequal wealth to sign the same text, and it is also the reason economic and social rights are usually framed as obligations of progressive realisation rather than as immediately enforceable claims. Article 23 follows with the right to work, free choice of employment, just and favourable conditions and protection against unemployment, together with equal pay for equal work and the right to form and join trade unions. Article 24 gives the right to rest and leisure and to periodic holidays with pay. Article 25 gives the right to an adequate standard of living, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood beyond a person’s control. The Declaration is not a treaty and creates no direct obligations of its own; the two Covenants of 1966 — on Civil and Political Rights, and on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights — carry its content into binding law, and India is a party to both.

Key facts

• Article 22 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the social security article, and it is the article quoted in this question.
• Article 22 verbatim: ’Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.’
• The Universal Declaration was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948, by resolution 217 A (III); it has 30 articles.
• Article 23 covers the right to work, free choice of employment, just and favourable conditions, protection against unemployment, equal pay for equal work and the right to form and join trade unions.
• Article 25 covers the right to an adequate standard of living and security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood and old age.
• The Declaration of Philadelphia was adopted by the International Labour Conference on 10 May 1944 and annexed to the ILO Constitution in 1946; its first principle is that labour is not a commodity.
• The ILO’s Social Security (Minimum Standards) Convention, 1952 (No. 102) is the binding international instrument that gives the social security right technical content.
• The First National Commission on Labour was set up on 24 December 1966 under Justice P. B. Gajendragadkar and submitted its report in August 1969.

Common traps

• Matching a quotation to whichever document you know best rather than to the voice the quotation is written in.
• Confusing the Universal Declaration with the Declaration of Philadelphia because both are 1940s declarations that mention social security. One is about everyone, the other is about labour.
• Treating the Universal Declaration as a treaty. It is a General Assembly resolution; the binding instruments are the 1966 Covenants.
• Reading ’in accordance with the organization and resources of each state’ as a weakening afterthought. It is a deliberate clause, and it is the clearest single fingerprint of Article 22.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The right to a standard of living adequate for health and well-being, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, is set out in which Article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?

  • (a)Article 22
  • (b)Article 23
  • (c)Article 24
  • (d)Article 25

  Answer(d) Article 25

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The principle that ’labour is not a commodity’ is stated in

  • (a)the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948
  • (b)the Declaration of Philadelphia, 1944
  • (c)ILO Convention No. 102 of 1952
  • (d)the Report of the First National Commission on Labour, 1969

  Answer(b) the Declaration of Philadelphia, 1944