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In 2013 an innovative human rights legal instrument entered into force. The Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights opens the possibility of presenting individual communications to the competent UN Committee on violations of these rights, such as the rights to housing, health or water. This talk will analyze the potentials of this mechanism though the lens of ‘human security’ as a concept that makes visible the poverty-related risks and vulnerabilities present today at a global scale. It will concentrate more particularly on the application of the Optional Protocol in Spain as a prototypical case study of the country that has constituted the major focus of action of the UN Committee on ESCR.
By doing so, the talk will also touch on how legal categories promote/allow inclusion, exclusion and vulnerability around different axis, such as migratory status, gender, socio-economic condition, and disability, and the ways in which the law may (or not) work in favor of the effective realization of all human rights, equality and social justice.
Speaker: Dorothy Estrada. Visiting Fellow, Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School.
Sponsor: RCC; Jean Monnet ad Personam Chair in European Union Law and Government.