Economics and Human Rights

Rick asks  whether we should ever care about the economic effects of various forms of human rights.  Here is my initial thought (admitting that I read only the abstract of the piece that prompted his query and not the piece itself).

Clearly it is not necessary to make a case for human rights on economic grounds; economic value is not a necessary or relevent condition for saying a human right exists.  But I think it may overstate it to say we should never care about the economic effects.  That is to say, it may be that some means of effectuating basic human rights have more postive economic effects than others.  I'm not convinced there is a problem with considering economic effects as we determine how to effectuate human rigths.

Susan