Breakthrough for universal social justice

No other international legal text guarantees a comparably comprehensive protection of economic, social and cultural rights as the International Covenant. The adoption of the Optional Protocol will have repercussions on national jurisdiction and help strengthen the protection of human rights worldwide.

The new complaints mechanism will allow victims of human rights violations, such as violations of the rights to health, education, food and housing, to address the United Nations if they were not able to obtain relief in their country. The possibility of this has existed for more than thirty years with the International Covenant on civil and political rights. With the compromise reached last Friday in Geneva, the international community of states affirms for the first time that economic, social and cultural rights are equally enforceable just as, for example, the freedom of expression or the right to a fair trial.

Up until the very end of negotiations, some states like Canada, the UK and the USA tried to weaken the text of the new instrument that was to be adopted. However, African and Latin-American countries, as well as several Asian and European countries, kept their support to a strong Optional Protocol encouraged by a broad global coalition of civil society organisations.

FIAN International has high hopes that the new treaty will soon be formally adopted by the Human Rights Council and General Assembly of the United Nations. FIAN, the international human rights organisation for the right to food, together with many actors from civil society, has been demanding the adoption of such a treaty since the early 1990s. “The formal adoption of the Optional Protocol will be the appropriate way of  marking the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights”, says Sandra Ratjen from FIAN International. “Not only is the new complaints mechanism a symbol for the indivisibility of human rights, but it can become a powerful tool in the defence of social human rights”.

The importance of the International Covenant will significantly increase for national courts all over the world, since in all those cases, where victims of social rights violations do not succeed to obtain justice at country level, they then have the opportunity to bring their case to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The adoption of the text of the Optional Protocol is thus conceived as being a great victory and an historic step towards more international social justice. FIAN will not losen its pressure on states until the text is formally adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations, and can effectively be used by victims of human rights violations.

Contact: Sandra Ratjen,  ratjen@fian.org
More information at www.opicescr-coalition.org