On the occasion of the Day of Human Rights on 10. December 1996, I would like to direct your attention this time to economic, social and cultural human rights. These have been treated as second class rights for many years. Only since the Vienna Human Rights Conference in 1993 and the World Social Summit at Copenhagen in 1995 have they emerged a little from the shadows. The realisation of these rights is a prerequisite that all ethnic groups can have access to adequate living standards.
Human rights are indivisible.
They include the classic civic-political rights and the economic, social and cultural rights. Without political participation, the economic, social and cultural rights cannot, in turn, be realised. For all categories of human rights, however, the people s dignity is the deciding issue. Thus human rights are indivisible and must not be played off one against the other. So, it is not enough for the church- and state development cooperation programmes to do only what is meaningful economically and ecologically.