Promoting the implementation of the optional protocol to the ICESCR

On July 26th, 2011 the Plurinational Legislative Assembly of Bolivia gave approval for ratification of the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Bolivia will be formally bound by the treaty once it deposits its instrument of ratification with the United Nations Secretariat.

The Toolkit for Action for the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights provides practical guidance to NGOs and other civil society groups, as well as States on their work around the Optional Protocol. The Toolkit aims to facilitate international and national advocacy work for the ratification and the entry into force of the Protocol and the national implementation of economic, social and cultural rights.

Ratify the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights to ensure justice for victims of economic, social and cultural rights violations

On October 22, 2009, the Philippine NGO-PO Network for ESC Rights publishes a statement on the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.

NGOs welcome historic step forward for the protection of all human rights.

The draft Optional protocol to the ICESCR was finalised in April 2008, and approved by the new Human Rights Council (which has replaced the United Nations’ Human Rights Commission) in June 2008. It was adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 10th, 2008.

It was opened for signature on 24 September 2009, at a ceremony held in New York.

The Malian ESC Rights Platform, that initiated the first alternative report on economic, social and cultural rights in Mali and West Africa, invites the Malian government to seize this opportunity and be one of the first States to sign and ratify the Optional Protocol.

The Malian ESC Rights Platform is organizing throughout the month of September an advocacy campaign for the signature of the Optional Protocol to the ICESCR.

Information, education and awareness raising activities will be carried out at the Djoliba Center in Bamako and in the mass media.

The adoption of the Optional Protocol was a historic step forward for human rights. 42 years after the adoption of a similar mechanism for civil and political rights, people suffering from ESC rights violations will at last be likewise taken into consideration within the United Nations legal system. Their right to an efficient remedy has been recognized.

Yet, Mali has not presented any first official report since the Covenant came into force in 1976. There is a lack of harmonisation, which compromises the achievement and protection of economic, social and cultural rights even more as long as the protocol has not been ratified.

It was thus necessary for the Malian ESC Rights Platform to organize itself so as to develop and carry out an advocacy strategy for the ratification of the Optional Protocol.