THE INTERNATIONAL COVENANT ON ECONOMIC, SOCIAL, AND CULTURAL RIGHTS

Summary: The International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), together with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR),  are the main implementation treaties of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The three documents together comprise what is sometimes known as the International Bill of Rights. Originally, there was only going to be one covenant for all of the rights enumerated in the UDHR. However, due to protests by the US against the very notion of economic, social, and cultural rights, two implementing treaties were devised.

The ICESCR requires ratifying states to provide the maximum amount of resources available and possible to ensure the economic, social and cultural rights of people within its territory. As countries differ in wealth and capacity, the ICESCR emphasizes the role of international cooperation and development to help states provide for the economic, social and cultural rights of their people. Rights laid out in the ICESCR include: the right to social security; the right to work and to just and favorable conditions of work, and to form trade unions; the right to maintain a family; the right to health; the right to an adequate standard of living, including food, housing and clothing; the right to culture and science; and the right to education, including compulsory primary education for all.

Status: The treaty was adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 16, 1966, making it available for signature, adoption and accession by UN member states. The treaty officially came into force on January 3, 1976. As of April 2004, 156 member states have either signed or ratified the ICESCR. In 1987, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights was established to monitor ratifying countries’ progress toward the goal of fully implementing the Covenant. The Committee is also responsible for providing general comments to help ratifying states understand what they should do to comply with the ICESCR. To that end, the Committee has analyzed and submitted some specific policies, laws and programs that countries can implement to help realize rights within their borders

Status of U.S. compliance: The U.S. signed the treaty on October 5, 1977 but is the only major, industrialized democracies that has yet to ratify the ICESCR. The Carter administration specifically advocated for ratification soon after the ICESCR came into force. At the 1993 United Nations World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, the Clinton administration even went as far as to announce its intention to ratify the ICESCR as well as the Convention of the Rights of the Child. To this point, however, the U.S. has still not ratified the Covenant.

Official website - This is the official site for the ICESCR, with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. It includes a link to a list of states that signed or ratified the covenant as well as a link for reservations and understandings that ratifying states have imposed upon the ICESCR upon ratification.

NGO Coalition for the Optional Protocol - This site is home to the NGO Coalition for an Optional Protocol to the ICESCR, which met in Geneva in an open-ended working group from February 23 to March 5, 2004. The Optional Protocol would enable individuals to seek justice internationally if they attempted and were denied access to justice domestically. It accompanies the ICESCR, but is a separate legal text that provides enforcement mechanisms to ensure individual rights when states that have ratified the treaty are unable or unwilling.

Updated March 29, 2005