Human Rights and Social Security in Latin America: A Review

PAUTASSI, LAURA CECILIA

Munich

Workshop; Workshop: “International Setting of Standards Innovation in Social Protection in Low Income Countries; 2009

Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International and Social Law

The relationship between social security and human rights in Latin America is a permanent topic of interest. A lot of reasons promote this discussion. One of the topics is the reform on the adjustment programmes applied in the nineties in Latin America and the consequences for the social system, in terms of more poverty, more unemployment, and the direct consequences on the economic, social and cultural rights (ESCRs). Parallel to these reforms, states have made important changes in their constitutions and have adopted the principal human rights treaty and protocol. In the particular case of the Americas, all the countries in Latin America have adopted the Protocol of San Salvador (except Chile and Venezuela), and all states have undertaken to observe social rights and adopt progressive policies. In this paper, I would like to discuss how the process has developed with respect to the obligations that must be observed from the Protocol and what is needed to report the compliance with social security rights. At the level of theory, there is widespread recognition among experts and advocates that the obligation of progressive realization of these rights ‘to the maximum of a state’s available resources’ is at the heart of their realization. However, at the practical level — in terms of monitoring efforts, field investigations, and adjudication by courts — this key obligation has largely been sidelined. Instead, the focus has been placed on various immediate obligations related to these rights, which are not dependent on resource availability. This paper is about this paradox and how the states comply with the realization of social rights.