A/HRC/32/31 65. Despite the rhetoric of indivisibility, both national and international endeavours to promote and protect economic and social rights are overshadowed by the assumption that while economic and social rights are desirable long-term social goals, they should not be treated as full-fledged human rights. The present report is not the place to review in detail the familiar arguments that have been invoked in support of this approach, which include claims that economic and social rights are too expensive, too vague, too empowering of the State, are potentially limitless, reward and encourage laziness, penalize wealth creation, undermine economic growth and are inimical to international competitiveness. These arguments, traditionally associated with those who might describe themselves as libertarians, neo-conservatives, freemarketeers or small government advocates, have triumphed in many countries in the twenty-first century and have been actively promoted by the most influential international organizations in the fields of development, finance and trade. While compelling counter-arguments have been put forward in response to each of the critiques, the biggest challenge by far is essentially ideological. The economic and political power of entrenched elites is best protected by policies that marginalize economic and social rights. 66. Many human rights proponents seem to prefer not to engage in these debates for fear that doing so would be a lost cause and that economic and social rights would be discredited or disowned rather than just marginalized or neglected. But that strategy leads to the same result in practical terms, except that the illusion is maintained that economic and social rights are an integral, even indivisible, part of the overall human rights framework. 67. The framework of legal recognition that underpins the approach adopted in the present report by no means exhausts the range of approaches that are and should be used in the promotion of economic and social rights. Campaigns to educate both rights holders and professionals, empower community groups, facilitate local-level activism or enable monitoring are all part of the expansive toolbox for economic and social rights activism.34 As has been cautioned: Unless all participants in [economic and social rights] litigation are conscious of the institutional limitations of the courts and consider the possibility that the particular claim may be more effectively addressed through another forum such as advocacy or community mobilisation, there will be the ever-present danger of untimely or inappropriate resort to litigation, and judgments that impede rather than facilitate transformation.35 68. The legal framework will influence all of these other dimensions and avenues and it is one of the dimensions that can most meaningfully be promoted and monitored through United Nations and related mechanisms. Put succinctly: Contemporary movements for social change cannot avoid working in the legal medium. There are no “law-free” zones in modern societies to which activists can repair so as to avoid entanglement with law and system. … Legal entitlements (including those formulated as “rights”) strongly influence the distribution of wealth and power and partially construct identities. Social change movements cannot avoid engagement on this terrain, and it is difficult 34 35 20 Peter Houtzager and Lucie E. White, “The long arc of pragmatic economic and social rights advocacy”, in Stones of Hope: How African Activists Reclaim Human Rights to Challenge Global Poverty, Lucie E. White and Jeremy Perelman, eds. (Stanford, California, Stanford University Press, 2011), p. 172. See Sandra Liebenberg, Socio-Economic Rights: Adjudication Under a Transformative Constitution (Claremont, Juta, 2010), pp. 77-78.