In the last few years a growing interest has been perceived, among economists as well as social leaders and politicians, in understanding the effects and impacts of economic measures on social life, on politics, and especially on culture, human beings and their values. There is a growing perception that the way in which wealth (and poverty) are distributed within a society, or between societies, fundamentally affects the values, social coexistence and life in common among people. Income distribution has effects in the first place on the economy and economic growth, but at the same time, in a deeper way, has moral, social and ethical implications. Societies are being deeply moved by the maldistribution of incomes. Internal rifts are occurring within them and forming seeds of violence, hatred and rancour. Social life has deteriorated in spite of the global increase in wealth. People are perceiving that instead of improving, their living conditions are getting worse.

   Human rights, as a code of values juridically accepted at the international level, can legitimately signal the ethically acceptable or unacceptable limits of economic policy measures and economic functioning. The human rights system has the legal obligation to observe the economic system and to signal the greater or lesser impact it is having in meeting the needs of individual human beings and on their enjoyment of essential civil, economic, social, political and cultural rights.

Income Distribution, Exclusion, Poverty and Discrimination

    Income distribution at the international and national levels is closely bound up with the processes of exclusion, poverty and discrimination. Exclusion is a concept that according to many authors would appear to accompany the new stage of globalization. Although there are parts of the world that are integrating into the new globalized situation, there are also many other regions and parts of the world that are excluded, that is, whose level of integration is decreasing in this new phase of world capitalist development. Secondly, this same process is occuring within each country, where regions that were formerly adequately integrated with the rest of society are being subjected by these new processes to a downward spiral towards exclusion. Thirdly, exclusion is occurring at the level of social groups discriminated against, especially for reasons of gender, ethnic origin or race. 

   Within societies there are groups that find themselves excluded and in which income differentiation implies a gradual disintegration of the ties by which they were bound to the rest of society. There are minority groups and indigenous peoples for whom the processes of globalization have led to severely accentuated phenomena of exclusion.

    Poor income distribution at the national and international levels gives rise to permanent situations of social exclusion. Exclusion is deeper and more definitive than poverty. Exclusion is the absence of participation, segregation, neglect and being forgotten. The existence of sectors that are excluded at the international and national levels leads to the development of some very particular feelings on the part of the sectors that are not excluded. The philosopher Julien Freund remarks that: “It would appear that exclusion is now part of normality in societies, and does not arouse any special moral or political conscience but instead evokes pity in the guise of the virtue of charity”. The consequence of exclusion, as has been in the case of international cooperation, is this sentiment of pity.

Economic, social and cultural rights in a globalized world

    “Reducing poverty is the fundamental objective of economic development”. This is the bald opening statement of The World Bank’s World Development Report for 1990.Today it has become almost a platitude in spite of the impotence and drama inherent in it. There is a gap between the behaviour of the economy as a whole and people’s individual economies, a question which national and international policy has never addressed.

   This growing contradiction between growth and distribution is having disastrous consequences in many countries and regions of the world. In nations apparently united, where the process of globalized economic growth without distribution is “demolishing” long-standing loyalties, the “integration mechanisms” laboriously built up are being torn apart. The rupture of systems of social integration is leaving chunks of pre-existing roots of religion, ethnic identity and race, or generally, a strange and violent combination of these. If culture is incapable of supplying the mortar to cement the past to the future, the present becomes deeply confusing and disturbing for people.

    While it is true that the issue of economic, social and cultural rights arose in a cold war context, those rights have today received new and renewed validation. During the cold war they served to establish a balance between the civil and the political rights supposedly respected by the western democracies as against the economic, social and cultural rights on which emphasis was laid by simply a question of the relationship between the possessors of wealth and the dispossessed, those suffering discrimination and exclusion. The question of economic, social and cultural rights is metamorphosing into the question of the rights of the poor and excluded in a globalized world. Developing these rights is to prevent silence from taking hold among the innocent.

Income Distribution and Globalization: General Conclusions

• Since the end of the cold war, the growth in the world economy has been accompanied by a marked negative distribution of income
  The globalized capitalistic economic growth of the past 10 years has produced social consequences consisting of two simultaneous phenomena: the concentration of wealth and social exclusion...entire regions of the world have been excluded from the tempo of growth, technological change and dizzying transformations to be found today. There are first world enclaves in “thirdworldized settings” and third or fourth world enclaves within developed countries.
  
  
• Bad distribution of income is always linked to poverty
  When income distribution begins to be concentrated in the hands of the few, relative poverty increases, as does extreme poverty. This happens in both developing and developed countries.
  
  
• Bad income distribution, when accompanied by economic growth, causes explosive social situations
  Societies and societal groups become increasingly vulnerable, creating a situation of uncertainty and social instability. The emergence of authoritarian, undemocratic political forms, chauvinistic nationalist movements, new forms of xenophobia, hatred of migrant workers, and other manifestations are the direct consequences of this type of development.
  
  
• Income distribution is very closely linked to the full enjoyment and realization of human rights
  Distribution of the benefits of economic growth is not only a 
  charitable grant by persons, groups or countries of goodwill, but is fundamentally an obligation constituted by the inherent rights of persons, groups and countries, as set forth in international agreements and treaties. 
  
  
• Income distribution should become an economic and social indicator to be used by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, UNDP and other international agencies, both public and private 
  The income distribution indicator appropriately refers to the manner in which relations between various groups within a society are constituted. Ex: Income distribution by household makes it possible to determine whether there is adequate social integration in a given country.
  

The Globalization of Poverty

    Globalization would appear to be a characteristic of contemporary economic and social life. Not to participate in globalization in all its many aspects today appears a defeat, remaining behind, removed from the world, and being condemned to backwardness and underdevelopment.

   There are, however, various simultaneous processes of globalization, which is why we must speak of “globalizations’. The globalization of communication powers, the internationalization of economies and the laws of the global market are also accompanied by a number of other processes of globalization which should be considered. There has also been reference at recent social summits to the “globalization of States and globalization of civil society”. There is no doubt that civil society is becoming increasingly globalized. Social organizations, social movements and social and political life itself are becoming more internationalized. 

    We are witnessing the “globalization of poverty”, perhaps the most striking consequence of the process now under way. As societies become globalized they seem to break from within. They blur into one sector, admittedly small, which quickly and enthusiastically takes part in the benefits of globalization, while another sector, generally quite numerous, receives only the disadvantages of these processes. The last eight years of the 1990s have been marked by the growing polarization of the social, economic and cultural scene.

   The globalization of poverty leads to awareness of the “globalization of rights”. This is the contradictory nature of globalization. Such things as trade and information are globalized from the top down, while rights are globalized from the bottom up. Poor people and poor countries observe social differences on their television screens and listen to egalitarian messages, bringing about increased globalization both of aspirations and of “standards”. This is the context, and the challenge, in which economic, social and cultural rights must now be analyzed. The Covenant that gave these rights legal value at the international level is a good basic framework for analysing the globalization of economic, social and cultural rights.

Convening a Social Forum

    Despite its central responsibility in the realization of economic, social and cultural rights, the State is neither the sole agent nor the sole actor on the economic and social scene. The globalization of economic, social and cultural relations calls for new outlooks. There is a growing need to create “codes of conduct” or “ethics of globalization” in order to assign responsibilities in this difficult but indispensable field. 

   The main practical recommendation of this study on income distribution and human rights is to establish a Social Forum with the participation of States, international financial institutions, particularly the World Bank and IMF, international development and cooperation agencies, NGOs devoted to development and action, especially in the third world, and banks and international private corporations, which might see the interest of taking economic, social and cultural rights into account in their policies.It is very important that development NGOs, international cooperation agencies and charitable foundations participate in the Social Forum, as they are acquiring even greater relevance in relations between north and south, as a part of the growing “privatization” of cooperation. The Commissioner for Human Rights will have a special role to play in the Social Forum. 


José Bengoa is Special Rapporteur for the UN Commission on Human Rights (Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities). Mr. Bengoa can be contacted at: Universidad de Humanismo Cristiano, Santiago, Chile. Fax: 562-671-3528.
Email: academia@rdc.cl