ICESCR 
Extraterritorial obligations
Optional Protocol to ICESCR
The Optional Protocol to the covenant has been adopted relatively later than many of the other human rights mechanisms. While the covenant is adopted by 170 States, the Optional Protocol has been ratified by only 24 States, with a total of 45 signatories (as of April 2020).1It is interesting to note that while the Optional Protocol of the ICESCR is ratified by 24 countries, the first (116 countries) and second (88 countries) Optional Protocols of its twin covenant (ICCPR) have far greater ratification. From a critical perspective, it is possible to interpret this as a reluctance on the part of the States to be held accountable for their obligations under social, economic, and cultural rights. The Optional Protocol of ICESCR contains three different procedures: the inquiry procedure, the communications procedure, and the inter-state procedure. While the inquiry procedure and the communications procedure of the Optional Protocol of ICESCR is similar to that of OP-CEDAW, the inter-state process is additional in ICESCR.2A more in-depth comparison of OP-ICESCR and OP-CEDAW (and important strategies to use these two processes most effectively towards advocacy on gender equality and women’s economic rights) can be found at IWRAW Asia Pacific and ESCR-Net’s Claiming Women’s Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: A Resource Guide to Advancing Women’s Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Using the Optional Protocol and Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Optional Protocol and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. A State party can submit a complaint to the Committee about an alleged violation of any article of the ICESCR by another State party. A prerequisite for this process is the ratification of the Optional Protocol by States on both sides of the complaint.
It is important to note that all the mechanisms we have discussed in this section can be utilised even more strongly by taking an interconnected approach to advocacy with these mechanisms. As the principle ‘human rights are indivisible’, we should see all of these United Nations mechanisms, CEDAW, SDGs, and ICESCR as complementing processes.
Civil society plays a critical role in ensuring that these processes are informed and inspired by each other, that one suggestion in a monitoring body is supported in another body. The States can sometimes pick and choose what they want to report on to these bodies while omitting other issues. It is the advocacy of civil society that can make these omitted issues visible and acted upon. This can happen via monitoring, shadow/alternative reports, using media, raising public awareness and ownership over States’ human rights obligations, and utilising the monitoring processes of the international human rights mechanisms.
ICESCR Extraterritorial obligations
Footnotes
- 1It is interesting to note that while the Optional Protocol of the ICESCR is ratified by 24 countries, the first (116 countries) and second (88 countries) Optional Protocols of its twin covenant (ICCPR) have far greater ratification. From a critical perspective, it is possible to interpret this as a reluctance on the part of the States to be held accountable for their obligations under social, economic, and cultural rights.
- 2A more in-depth comparison of OP-ICESCR and OP-CEDAW (and important strategies to use these two processes most effectively towards advocacy on gender equality and women’s economic rights) can be found at IWRAW Asia Pacific and ESCR-Net’s Claiming Women’s Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: A Resource Guide to Advancing Women’s Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Using the Optional Protocol and Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Optional Protocol and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.