Third Open-Ended Working Group to Consider Options Regarding the Elaboration of an Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
Geneva, 6-17 February 2006

Opening Statement
NGO Coalition for an Optional Protocol to the ICESCR
6 February 2006

Thank you Madam Chairperson for the opportunity to address the Open-Ended Working on an Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, on behalf of the NGO Coalition for an Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The Coalition is comprised of national, regional and international organisations and individuals supporting the adoption of a comprehensive Optional Protocol to the ICESCR.

In 2004 and 2005, members of our Coalition participated in the previous sessions of the Working Group. We have been heartened by the significant developments we have witnessed. As the delegates at the second session themselves affirmed, the momentum for an Optional Protocol to the ICESCR is building. This third session of the Working Group represents an historic opportunity to commit to moving forward with the drafting of an Optional Protocol.

An Optional Protocol to the ICESCR will give real meaning to economic, social and cultural rights. It will implement the commitment made by governments in the World Conference on Human Rights Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action that “all human rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent and interrelated.” It will affirm the UN’s commitment to recognising the equal status and importance of economic, social and cultural rights, at time when so many in the world are denied enjoyment of these rights.

An Optional Protocol to the ICESCR is essential to ensure the full protection and realisation of the rights to housing, health, culture, education, food, social security, work, and other rights in the Covenant. No other mechanism at the international level provides for the breadth of coverage on economic, social and cultural rights issues.

The Coalition welcomes the analytical paper prepared by the Chairperson, “Elements for an optional protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights”, which will be considered by this OEWG. This provides an excellent framework for the discussions in the coming days.

Motivated by a widespread concern for the protection and promotion of economic, social and cultural rights, the NGO Coalition has submitted its views, a document that has been distributed today.

Madam Chairperson, the mandate of the Working Group is to consider options for an Optional Protocol. Let us, as the Coalition, be clear. To our mind, the option of no Optional Protocol is not an option. It perpetuates a historic hierarchy of rights, wrought in a different political age. It fosters an inequality of review procedures within the human-rights monitoring mechanisms. It ignores the broad-ranging implementation of economic, social and cultural rights in all regions of the world. It denies the growing, global jurisprudence on economic, social and cultural rights, which has derived in large part from the increasingly comprehensive domestic and regional mechanisms to address economic, social and cultural rights. And it ignores the needs of our shared constituents, those who suffer violations of their economic, social and cultural rights, who need a mechanism at the UN level through which these violations can be addressed.

The need for access to justice for those whose rights have been violated is the imperative which drives these discussions and our participation in this process, both here in Geneva and in our own work at the national level.

The developments achieved during the past sessions of the Working Groups have convinced us that it is time to take the next step and begin the drafting process for a comprehensive Optional Protocol.

An OP to the ICESCR should incorporate the following elements as its broad framework.

First, it should provide for individual and collective communications;

Second, it should incorporate an inquiries mechanism, as per the CEDAW OP and procedures under the CAT; and

Third, it should cover all the substantive rights contained in the Covenant (Articles 1-15), and include all components of the rights, without exclusions or reservations.

It is absolutely critical that an Optional Protocol maintain the integrity of the Covenant as a whole by providing for an effective and comprehensive complaints procedure consistent with the fundamental principle that all human rights require effective remedies.

We thank you for the opportunity to participate in the Working Group, and look forward to the work of this third session.

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