This work studies the economic foundations of the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights. It is argued that legal principles alone cannot fully actualise this instrument: only sustained inter-disciplinary elaboration of its guarantees can give this instrument full effect.

Economic, social and cultural rights are finally coming of age. This book brings together all essential documents, materials, and case law relating to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) - one of the most important human rights instruments in international law - and its Optional Protocol. This book presents extracts from primary materials alongside critical commentary and analysis, placing the documents in their wider context and situating economic, social, and cultural rights within the broader human rights framework. There is increasing interest internationally, regionally, and in domestic legal systems in the protection of economic, social, and cultural rights. The Optional Protocol of 2008 allows for individual communications to be made to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights after its entry into force in 2013. At the regional level, socio-economic rights are well embedded in human rights systems in Europe, Africa and the Americas. At the national level, constitutions and courts have increasingly regarded socio-economic rights as justiciable, narrowing the traditional divide with civil and political rights. This book contextualises these developments in the context of the ICESCR. It provides detailed analysis of the ICESCR structured around its articles, drawing on national as well as international case law and materials, and containing all of the key primary materials in its extensive appendices. This book is indispensible for the judiciary, human rights practitioners, government legal advisers and agencies, national human rights institutions, international organisations, regional human rights bodies, NGOs and human rights activists, academics, and students alike.

The book concerns the study and analysis of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights from an international legal perspective, taking into consideration the adoption of the 2008 Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). The volume provides a detailed account of the structure and functioning of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in the light of its jurisprudence, through a study of the Committee’s procedures and practices (periodic reports and general comments), including taking into account the Optional Protocol for individual complaint procedure. The book considers the possible implications of the work of this Committee on other UN Committees, such as the Human Rights Committee and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, as well as considering the repercussions of its work on the international protection of fundamental rights, such as the right to education, to health and adequate food. The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights will be of particular interest to academics and students of International and Human Rights law.

Recent years have seen a remarkable expansion in the scale and importance of economic, social, and cultural rights (ESC rights), culminating in the adoption of the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in December 2008. The Protocol gives individuals and groups the ability to bring complaints about rights violations before the UN Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. Against this background, this book focuses on the question of how fundamental socio-economic human rights enshrined in international law are defined, interpreted, understood, and implemented. It assesses how effective efforts to realize ESC rights have been and investigates the contemporary challenges obstructing their protection. It sets out the impact of the global financial crisis and austerity measures, the human rights responsibilities of corporations, and trends in the justiciability of those rights at the national and international level. The interrelationship between ESC rights and other legal regimes such as trade and investment law, environmental law, international criminal law, and international humanitarian law is also thoroughly examined. After an introduction by the editors the book contains seventeen chapters looking at the main questions which shape the progressive realization of ESC rights and their monitoring mechanisms. The authors of the chapters, both scholars and practitioners, adopt interdisciplinary approaches that move beyond traditional analyses of ESC rights. In doing so, they clarify and illuminate multiple aspects of the law by bringing together the different aspects of ESC rights, restating the challenges they face, and assessing the progress that has been made in expanding their adoption.

This book addresses the international legal obligation to protect economic, social, and cultural human rights in times of armed conflict and other situations of armed violence. These rights provide guarantees to individuals of their fundamental rights to work, to an adequate standard of living (food, water, housing), to education, and to health. Armed violence can take many forms, from civil unrest or protest and other forms of internal disturbances and tensions to higher levels of violence that may amount to armed conflict, whether of an international or of a non-international character. However, in all such cases the protection of ESC rights is sorely challenged. Situations of actual or potential violence present a number of challenges to the application and implementation of human rights law in general and socio-economic rights obligations more specifically. This book sets out the legal framework, defining what constitutes a minimum universal standard of human rights protection applicable in all circumstances. It assesses the concept and content of ESC rights' obligations, and evaluates how far they can be legally applicable in various scenarios of armed violence. By looking at the specific human rights treaty provisions, it discusses how far ESC rights obligations can be affected by practical and legal challenges to their implementation. The book addresses the key issues facing the protection of such rights in times of armed conflict: the legal conditions to limit ESC rights on security grounds, including the use of force; the extraterritorial applicability of international human rights treaties setting out ESC rights; the relationship between human rights law and international humanitarian law; and the obligations of non-state actors under human rights law and with particular relevance to the protection of ESC rights. The book assesses the nature of these potential challenges to the protection of ESC rights, and offers solutions to reinforce their continued application.