An Inclusive Litany

7/1/98

A United Nations summit on human rights is set to hear testimony describing Idaho's workfare policy as an international human rights violation. Idaho requires welfare recipients to spend 20 hours a week working or looking for work, and sets a lifetime two-year cap on cash benefits for most recipients. The Kensington Welfare Rights Union, which is paying to send two Idaho mothers to the New York summit to complain of their welfare status, says Idaho's aggressive welfare reform is a violation of Articles 23, 25 and 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the United Nations in 1948.