The Optional Protocol To The International Covenant On Economic Social And Cultural Rights A Commentary

On 10 December 2008, the UN General Assembly adopted the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. This new commentary aims to address the need for scholarly research, reasoned argument, consistent interpretation and creative approaches to adjudication under the new OP-ICESCR to ensure that its promise and purpose is fully realised. The edited book is divided into three main sections that respectively address procedural issues, substantive interpretation and remedies and enforcement. Each of the chapters sets out the background to the relevant article of the Protocol and analyses the different issues that are likely to arise in its interpretation and application. It seeks to move beyond a standard legal commentary to ask how the mechanism can be effectively applied and interpreted.

"One purpose of this book is to respond to this shift: to look beyond the more abstract and ideological discussions of the nature of socio-economic rights in order to engage empirically with how such rights have manifested in international practice". -- INTRODUCTION.

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.

1.2 A new momenttim

This exciting Research Handbook combines practitioner and academic perspectives to provide a comprehensive, cutting edge analysis of economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR), as well as the connection between ESCR and other rights. Offering an authoritative analysis of standards and jurisprudence, it argues for an expansive and inclusive approach to ESCR as human rights.