On 15 August 2021, GI-ESCR made two submissions to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights’ revised draft Rules of procedure under the OP-ICESCR.

GI-ESCR submitted an individual submission that focused solely on the Committee’s proposal to introduce a new Pilot Views procedure. The submission begins from the observation that draft Rule 20, which would create the Pilot Views procedure, is very similar to Rule 61 of the European Court of Human Rights, which codified that body’s Pilot Judgement procedure. It then argues that i) similarities between these two rules afford the Committee the opportunity to heed well-founded criticism that the European Court has attracted, whilst ii) salient differences between the two bodies also give us reason to question whether draft Rule 20 should mirror Rule 61 to the extent that it does. The submission may be accessed here.

GI-ESCR also contributed to an ESCR-Net submission on the draft Rules of procedure under the OP-ICESCR, alongside the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR); Observatori DESC, and the Social Rights Advocacy Centre (SRAC). Here, we provided information on Rule 18 (Discontinuances) and Rule 1(4) (Limiting communications to official languages). Information on Rule 20 (Pilot Views procedure) was also drawn from our individual submission. This collective submission may be accessed here.