Today, GI-ESCR and ESCR-Net colleagues from the Asia Indigenous People’s Pact and Abahlali baseMjondolo (South Africa), spoke at the Opening of the session of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights urging the Committee to continue its vital work to monitor and protect economic, social and cultural rights.

The CESCR’s virtual session is underway with a very limited agenda and no Dialogues with States under the State reporting procedure. The Committee is making efforts to ensure the continued engagement of civil society in its work.

Mr Binota Dhamai of the Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact, described how the COVID-19 crisis and its response has revealed that social, economic, and political systems are broken in many countries and it has revealed and exacerbated deep systemic inequalities and structural vulnerabilities, in and between countries, that in many instances also underlie the climate crisis. He drew the Committee’s attention to the ESCR-Net Global Call to Action in response to COVID-19 and thanked the CESCR for its important work to protect ESC rights.

Mr S’bu Zikode, President of Abahlali baseMjondolo, briefed the Committee on the situation of shack dwellers across the world and described the daily violations of their economic, social and cultural rights.

In its statement, GI-ESCR congratulated the Committee on its important and timely Statement on economic, social and cultural rights and the COVID-19 pandemic.

We welcomed the holding of the virtual session, despite its limited nature, but raised concerns that the postponement of State reviews due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the UN financial crisis, is leading to a significant protection gap for economic, social and cultural rights. Given the range and scale of ESC rights restrictions and violations arising from the pandemic, it is crucial for rights holders that the CESCR can fully acquit its mandate to assess States’ compliance with the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and its Optional Protocol.

We also highlighted the civil society letter urging the Human Rights Treaty Bodies to begin scheduling State reviews no later than 2021, and if necessary, take a pragmatic approach which allows online State reviews on a temporary and exceptional basis. We emphasised that predictability, transparency, inclusivity, and accessibility are essential conditions to enable the full participation of civil society, in particular if online reviews are organised.

In relation to the recent CESCR elections, GI-ESCR raised concerns about the lack of transparency for the holding of the elections, which impaired the ability of civil society to scrutinise the elections and to advocate for States to prioritise independence, diversity and relevant expertise of members, in their voting. We also raised concerns about the results which will see a very disappointing decrease in the number of women on the Committee.

Finally, GI-ESCR announced the publication of the 2019 CESCR Yearbook. This 3rd edition of the Yearbook is now available in a new format and includes statistics about the state reporting and communications procedures, case summaries and summaries of the concluding observations for each State reviewed in 2019.

Read GI-ESCR’s Statement HERE.