The jurisprudence of the committee on economic, social and cultural rights
The United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights is a body of human rights experts mandated to monitor State implementation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Under the Optional Protocol to the ICESCR the Committee may consider individual complaints that a State Party to the Optional Protocol has violated a Covenant right. For an explanation of this process and the different types of decision that the Committee can deliver, see GI-ESCR’s Guide to the Individual Communication Process.
The Committee has delivered a total of 73 decisions, including 10 decisions on the merits, 20 inadmissibility decisions and 43 discontinuance decisions. On this page, you can find:
A summary of each of the communications that the Committee has decided
A database with statistics on all of the Committee’s decisions
An analysis of the most significant trends that have emerged from the Committee’s jurisprudence
The page was last updated on 26th April 2021.
summaries of committee decisions
+ 2022
Decisions on the merits
* Summary
Inadmissibility decisions
Discontinuance decisions
Deisy Karina Gómez Torres v Spain
A.S.M.C. v Spain
J.G.L. et al. v Spain
+ 2021
Decisions on the merits
Inadmissibility Decisions:
Discontinuance decisions
H.M. and F.J.H.H. v Spain
A.M.F. and J.A.M.F. v Spain
S.S.G. et al. v Spain
H.M., R.M. and their children v Spain
G.M.S. v Spain
M.H. and I.M. v Spain
G.M. v Spain
M.G. and R.V. v Spain
M.C. v Spain
J.S. et al v Spain
P.P. et al v Spain
G.L. v Spain
F.C. et al v Spain
A.H. et al v Spain
P.R.A. v Spain
P.E. v Spain
+ 2020
Decisions on the merits
Inadmissibility Decisions:
+ 2019
Decisions on the merits:
Inadmissibility Decisions:
Discontinuance Decisions:
Elisabet Posada Pérez et al v Spain
+ 2018
Decisions on the merits:
Inadmissibility Decisions:
+ 2017
Decisions on the merits:
Inadmissibility Decisions:
Discontinuance Decisions:
+ 2016
Decisions on the merits:
Inadmissibility Decisions:
+ 2015
Decisions on the merits:
Inadmissibility Decisions:
Database of individual communications
At GI-ESCR, we have been tracking the Committee’s jurisprudence under the Optional Protocol and collecting information on the communications that it has determined.
An excel spreadsheet containing this data may be accessed here.
The spreadsheet can be used to sort communications according to filters such as the admissibility issues raised, the right concerned, or whether the author was represented by legal counsel.
The spreadsheet was last updated on 19th April 2021.
trends in the Committee’s jurisprudence
Below, we present and analyse several of the most significant trends that have emerged from the Committee’s decisions.
The evolving workload of the Committee
At present, it takes the Committee an average of 21 months from the date that a communication is registered to make an inadmissibility decision, and 26 months to make a merits decision.
In the first five years following the entry into force of the Optional Protocol the Committee registered less than 8 new cases each year (2013 – 2017). This changed drastically in 2018 as the Committee registered a total of 67 new communications, followed by an additional 84 in 2019. In 2020 the number of registered communications fell back to 24, possibly as a consequence of eviction moratoria that have been introduced by States in the context of the coronavirus pandemic. The latest update to the Committee’s website shows that only 8 cases have thus far been registered in 2021.
CESCR communications registered and determined each year
CESCR backlog, as measured by the total number of communications pending.
Please note that these graphs are intended to show general trends in the Committee's workload. There may be minor inaccuracies in relation to the exact number of cases registered, decided and pending.
As can be seen from the graph above, the Committee now decides more communications than it did in the early years of its functions under the Optional Protocol. Indeed, after narrowing the gap between communications registered and decided in 2020, it is possible that 2021 may be the first year since 2017 in which the Committee decides more cases than it registers.
The fact that the number of communications registered far exceeded the number decided in 2018 and 2019 means that the Committee still has a significant backlog of cases to clear. The Committee is currently considering innovative ways in which it can adapt to deal with this backlog. For example, in its Draft Rules of Procedure under the Optional Protocol, the Committee has proposed to introduce a Pilot Views procedure that is similar in nature to the Pilot Judgment Procedure of the European Court Human Rights (see Rule 20).
Which rights have been invoked the most?
CESCR decisions according to the primary right that they concern
In the vast majority of cases decided by the Committee, the individual claimant alleged a violation of the right to adequate housing (56 of 73 decisions). Spain was the respondent State Party in all of these cases, over 75% of which resulted in a discontinuance decision.
In many of these cases the complainant asked the Committee to request interim measures, a measure that is particularly important in situations where individuals face the potential violation of their rights through an eviction. The Committee’s willingness to request interim measures may be considered one of the factors driving the large number of complaints that concern the right to adequate housing. For example, interim measures were granted in all but one of the 16 right to housing communications that were discontinued by the Committee in its 69th session (2021).
The Committee has also considered ten cases in which the complainant has alleged a violation of the right to social security, although as it declared eight of these cases inadmissible it has not developed a great deal of jurisprudence on the substance of the right itself. Seven of the inadmissible cases were nearly identical in nature, having all been brought by former employees of a Spanish bank who had lost their right to benefit from a pension policy when their employment was terminated (A.C.G. et al provides a representative example). The other inadmissible communication, Arellano Medina, concerned social security arrangements in Ecuador. The Committee reached a merits decision in the case of Miguel Ángel López Rodríguez, yet determined that Spain’s reduction of a prisoner’s disability benefit did not constitute a violation of the Covenant. Trujillo Calero is the sole case in which the Committee has established that a violation of the right to social security took place.
An alleged violation of the right to health has formed the basis of two communications, one of which was declared inadmissible (Merino Sierra et al) and one which resulted in a determination that the Covenant had been violated (S. C. and G. P., which concerned in vitro fertilisation).
The right to just and favourable conditions of work has been the primary right concerned in two cases, both of which were declared inadmissible (Martins Coelho, Luciano Daniel Juárez). There are currently two communications on the Committee’s list of pending cases which concern the right to just and favourable conditions of work, both of which are addressed to France. As such, it is possible that the Committee will begin to develop its jurisprudence on this right in the near future.
The right to work, the right to join a trade union and the right to take part in cultural life were the primary rights invoked in one case each (respectively, Arellano Medina, M. L. B. and A.M.B.). As all three cases were found to be inadmissible the Committee did not have the opportunity to engage in a substantive interpretation of their content.
Which State parties have cases concerned?
As can be seen from the graph on the right, Spain has been the respondent State party in the overwhelming majority of the Committee’s cases (65 out of 73).
This trend looks set to continue, with 132 of the Committee’s 139 pending cases addressed to Spain, all but one of which concern the right to adequate housing. It is worth noting, however that it is only in six cases that the Committee has found Spain to be in violation of the ICESCR (I.D.G; Ben Djazia et al; López Albán et al; Gómez-Limón Pardo; El Goumari and Tidli; and El Ayoubi and El Azouan Azouz).
The predominance of Spanish housing cases could be explained by the interplay of two key factors:
Firstly, following the financial crisis Spain experienced a severe housing crisis which left many people in a vulnerable housing situation. As described above, the Committee’s power to request interim measures makes it a particularly important forum for securing the rights of individuals in this context.
Secondly, in 2018 the Spanish Supreme Court determined that UN Treaty Body individual decisions were legally binding, greatly increasing the attractiveness of the CESCR as a forum for settling disputes.
CESCR Decisions by Respondent State Party
Ecuador occupies a distant second place in the table of States that have been concerned by the Committee’s decisions, with a total of four communications. Italy, Portugal, Luxembourg and Argentina have each been the subject of one of the Committee’s decisions.
Aside from Spain, communications against France, Belgium, Argentina and Uruguay lie in wait on the Committee’s list of pending cases.
What type of decisions do the cescr make most often?
CESCR Decisions by Type
As of April 2021, the Committee has delivered a total of 73 decisions.
Over half of these (43) were decisions to discontinue communications, often as a result of the fact that the complainant had found a satisfactory solution to the problem which drove them to submit a communication to the CESCR (see, for example, the case of Elisabet Posada Pérez et al).
In the most recent 69th session, over half of the 16 discontinuance decisions were requested by the authors themselves.
The Committee has also declared 20 communications to be inadmissible in full (not including declarations of partial inadmissibility).
The most common reason for a communication being declared inadmissible in full is simply that the Committee is not competent ratione temporis to hear it, as the events that form the subject of a communication occurred prior to the entry into force of the Optional Protocol for the State in question (art. 3 (2) (b) OP-ICESCR). This has occurred on nine occasions, seven in relation to the set of near identical Spanish social security cases (such as the case of L.A.M.C.), one in relation to a Spanish case on the right to health (Merino Sierra) and one in a social security case against Ecuador (Alarcón Flores et al). All of these communications were decided before 2018, however. In recent years, communications are more likely to be declared inadmissible for failure to exhaust domestic remedies (article 3 (1) OP-ICESCR) or for insufficient substantiation (article 3 (2) (e) OP-ICESCR).
Finally, the Committee has considered a total of 10 cases on the merits. It has found a violation of the Covenant in all of these cases, bar two (Miguel Ángel López Rodríguez; Soraya Moreno Romero), meaning that a violation of the Covenant is found in 80% of cases that make it past the admissibility stage. This may be considered as both a testament to the difficulty of passing the stringent admissibility criteria and a plea to counsel to ensure that they familiarise themselves with the Committee’s standards.