Unasked Questions about Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights from the Experience of the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education (1998-2004): A Response to Kenneth Roth, Leonard S. Rubenstein, and Mary Robinson.

This article presents a response to writers Kenneth Roth, Leonard S. Rubenstein and Mary Robinson on matters related to the Right to Education. The author wants to contribute to the recently initiated debate about economic, social, and cultural rights in "Human Rights Quarterly," by posing four questions that the author has found crucially important. His starting point is that the right to education, and indeed all economic, social, and cultural rights, should be defended against distortions, not only denials and violations. The two extremes that exemplify distortions are the United Nations and the United States. The United Nations is over-promising. For any imaginable economic, social, and cultural issue, one can find a UN document that asserts an underlying human right. The US is under-promising by denying that there is any such thing as economic, social, and cultural rights. The author has found it helpful in his own work to describe and critique both as distortions, adding that--gratifyingly--they do not guide the contemporary practice of states.