Die Universalisierung sozialer Menschenrechte am Beispiel sozialer Grundsicherung

This work examines the question of how, in a world with more than 190 countries, in which we can anticipate that states (or their representatives) will argue differently on both an international level and with regard to their national legal systems, the universalisation of social human rights (Art. 22–25 Universal Declaration of Human Rights – UDHR; Art. 6, 9, 11 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights – ICESCR) can be understood by means of empirical evidence. The study’s interpretation of these social rights is based on primary documents from the periods in which the UDHR and ICESCR were drafted, national reports submitted by signatories of the ICESCR, and the constitutions, national laws and regulations of five countries in the world (Germany, Mexico, Russia, China and India). By focusing on basic social security cover, this work demonstrates that there has been some universalisation of social human rights, specifically from the beginning of the 1990s.