Can Markets Secure Human Rights
Manuel Couret Branco
mbranco@uevora.pt
Department of Economics
NICPRI
Can Markets Secure Human Rights
• Most rights, the negative as much as the positive, demand the provision
of goods and services
• Responsibility is a key issue in human rights. Who or what has the
obligation to provide those goods and services that constitute rights
• In human rights literature in general, the State is usually responsible for
securing human rights
• Can the responsibility model centred in the State be extended to nonState agents’ obligations, such as markets?
• Water and social security will be the examples. They have the advantage
of being relatively homogenous goods and services
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Can Markets Secure Human Rights
• In September 2010 the UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution
recognizing the human right to water and sanitation
• The right to social security is explicitly referred to in the UDHR, articles
22 and 25, and in the ICESCR article 9
• Rights, if they are to be fully taken as rights, must be equally allocated
amongst all those entitled to enjoy them
• Beyond the legitimate statutory exceptions, rights do not admit exclusion
either
• Rights of individuals correspond to duties of other individuals or
institutions. Suppliers of goods and services as rights must be
accountable
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Can Markets Secure Human Rights
• When human rights are being promoted, one is asserting a social
preference meaning that a degree to which people’s needs are covered
in a certain instance may be better than in another
• Actually, universal coverage is the only acceptable situation, at least as a
tendency. Any other situation may be considered a violation of a right
• Markets do not state social preferences. They cannot argue that
universal coverage is better than any other distribution structure
• What matters for markets is that that sellers are able to sell the amounts
they wish at market prices and that buyers are able to buy what they
intend at the same market prices
• Inequality and exclusion are therefore not a problem
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Can Markets Secure Human Rights
• If the rights of some individuals are not secured, then other individuals
or institutions have failed in carrying out their duties
• The inability of an individual to exercise his or her rights may be
considered a human right’s violation and therefore a crime
• When the state fails in securing human rights, the state is accountable
either legally in a court of law or politically through elections
• If the market fails in securing human rights, whom should an individual
turn to?
• The state is both elected and known, the market is by definition
anonymous
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Can Markets Secure Human Rights
• A competitive market can produce inefficient social allocation, especially
when the decision is between human consumption and productive uses
• The market is also inefficient is securing the right to social security. First
of all the market is not able to cover risks adequately. Ex: unemployment
• Private health insurance or private retirement pension have been more
successful. Nevertheless, the market also fails in providing them as
human rights
• It is difficult to predict all risks. Competition could also lead to attracting
preferentially low risk clients
• Private pension system cannot guarantee a comfortable level of income
without operating in financial markets. An investment is not a synonym
of a guarantee
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Can Markets Secure Human Rights
• Market’s postulates are contradictory with human rights as the best
possible result accepts inequality and exclusion
• Markets tends to reduce all categories of goods and services, and, thus,
of rights, to only one, the commodity
• With commodities needs have an economic and private nature whereas
with human rights needs have a political and public nature
• Decommodifying human rights implies recognizing the public character
of supplying some goods an services
• Public provision is not synonym of the State. The democratic principle of
subsidiarity sustains that decisions concerning rights must be
decentralized to a point as close to the people concerned as possible
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Can Markets
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Manuel Couret Branco
mbranco@uevora.pt
Department of Economics
NICPRI