Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

FIDH advocates for the full recognition, effective realisation and justiciability of economic, social and cultural (ESC) rights. Together with its member organisations, FIDH documents violations of ESC rights, from forced evictions to labour rights violations in global supply chains or shipbreaking yards.

FIDH supports victims by using international and regional complaint and adjudication mechanisms such as the European Committee of Social
Rights. With the OP-ICESCR coalition, FIDH campaigns for the ratification of the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), which enables victims to access a remedy mechanism at the UN level.

Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
Optional Protocol

FIDH is actively involved in the campaign for the adoption of an Optional Protocol (OP) to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural rights. This Protocol would establish a communication procedure which would enable individuals, or groups of individuals or their representative to bring complaints to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural rights (CESCR) concerning violations of rights contained in the Covenant. The adoption of such a Protocol has been recommended at the Vienna World Conference on Human Rights in 1993, to improve the justiciability of these rights and restore the balance with International Covenant on Civil and Political rights which already allows for individual recourse. An open-ended working group of the United Nations has thus been created and is currently discussing an optional protocol. FIDHis an active member of the International NGO coalition for the OP.