Economic, social and cultural (ESC) rights are regularly transgressed by States, even though they committed to their implementation and protection, in accordance with the international covenants they have signed.
Presently, few States comply with the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), some of them even violate it on a regular basis for different reasons. First, there is a lack of political will, mainly due to the bad use of resources and the pressure exerted by broad multinational firms and international monetary institutions. Secondly, due to the ICESCR’s system: until the optional protocol to the ICESCR (adopted on December 10th, 2008) comes into force, no individual or collective complaints will be made to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (while the ICCPR has had such instrument since 1976). The lack of joint actions between the government and civil society should also be underlined. Yet, most of the time, the latter is willing to work in collaboration with the government for a wide implementation of human rights in order to achieve a better governance while respecting everyone’s independence. Finally, the international public opinion is too often unaware of the serious situation of human rights violations, and consequently does not exert enough pressure on the government
In order to enforce economic, social and cultural rights, the civil society must be able to reach three main stakeholders: governments, the United Nations and multinational firms. Therefore, the civil society needs to have the necessary knowledge and appropriate methods. Each region of the world evolves in a different context, which leads each civil society to adopt a rights-claim strategy adapted to its own country. The different methods can later be used in other countries.
The development of a dynamic between organisations from various regions of the world.
Terre des Hommes France, Juristes-Solidarités (France), Fedina (India) and the Aoudaghost Network (with organizations from Mali, Togo, Benin and Senegal) have decided to implement together an international programme in order to facilitate exchanges and capitalization on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights enforceability approaches. The project offers a training of social actors by social actors, that is, an exchange between countries of the South: the enforceability approaches used in Asia can be taught in Africa, and vice versa. Latin-American stakeholders, with their particular political background and a social organisation already quite in advance, will be solicited in this project as trainers / consultants.
Several other organizations, partners of Terre des Hommes France or Juristes-Solidarités, take part in this programme. Their work consists in raising vulnerable populations’ awareness and training them on their rights and enforceability approaches.
