The National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRCK) held a symposium related to ‘social, economic and cultural rights (hereinafter ‘social rights)’ with the participation of experts, related NGOs and government agencies at the Seoul Youth Hostel on April 25. This symposium was a large-scale event that focused on poverty as well as an overall review of human rights issues regarding the elderly, person with disabilities and women.
During the symposium, which focused on social issues faced by the low-income bracket, the current status of Korean society was reviewed and the international standard and foreign case studies were compared and analyzed to seek the national obligations for guaranty of social rights of the poverty class and its improvement plans.
The NHRCK has been making efforts to improve the human rights of socially vulnerable classes and minorities, and it has made substantial progress in the sectors of human rights improvement of prison inmates in detention facilities. The Commission has been making even more efforts to promote social equality in Korea to further its goals.
Particularly, the NHRCK has set the expansion of its interest on social rights as the direction of the Commission in its second term from the year 2005, and in order to set the concrete direction on the social rights, it has been holding the symposium on social rights with experts every month since October 2005. This symposium was organized for the purpose of arranging the discussions on social rights to this point, approaching to the social rights issues in more in-depth, and seeking for improvement plans.
In Korea, one out of eight people belongs to the poverty class, such as recipient of basic living subsidy, poverty class without receiving the basic living subsidy, and its next level group and others. During the IMF economic crisis and recovery, social polarization has widened. For the issue of poverty, the economic deficiency is a very important issue of survival in Korean Society. The real nature of poverty experienced by the poor is not limited to low income but extends to their overall quality of life, such as housing, health and education. In particular, the human rights situation in labor, healthcare and housing has been very severe and vulnerable.
The territory for social rights, such as rights to work, rights to health, rights to housing and rights to education is the field that requires the active action of the state that supplies certain goods and money as well as service in material and facility supplies. And, the social rights policy of a state influences greatly on the human rights of socially vulnerable groups or poverty class more than any other classes. For this reason, international society has been intensely contemplating the minimal obligation of the state to take care of its citizens. Since the subject that requires the most urgent action in realizing the social rights with the direct influence on the human rights of the socially vulnerable class is the poverty class, improving the human rights of the poverty class would be a barometer to measure the level of social rights in our society.
This symposium was prepared to approach to the issue of poverty as the core problem in Korean society. Under the theme of “Poverty and Social Rights,” the elderly, children, women and people with disabilities have been selected as the people who need the most attention.
This symposium began with a presentation called “The Obligation of the State for Securing Social Rights for the Poor in Korean Society.” Experts discussed the topics selected by the so called working group of four divisions dealing with the elderly, children, women and people with disabilities during several conferences for the past three months and the discussed policy proposals are comprehensively discussed.
