Overview
Recent decades have seen the growing involvement of private actors in the provision of services that are critical to the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR), from education and health, to water and housing. A number of these services have often traditionally been delivered by the State and referred to as ‘public services’.
Although the involvement of private actors may play a positive role in certain cases, the increased privatisation of these ESCR-related services raises many human rights concerns. A range of human rights monitoring bodies have sounded the alarm in reports published over recent years, exposing human rights violations of States that result from private actors’ involvement in public services. Concerns raised include evidence that privatisation may to lower quality of, and result in discrimination in access to, services, and lead to increased inequalities, segregation, and the reinforcement of unbalanced power relations.
While it is becoming clear that human rights set limitations and conditions on the involvement of private actors in ESCR-related services, the question remains as to whether human rights demand that certain services be delivered publicly. The issue is increasingly critical in light of rising inequalities and climate change. Developing quality accessible public services, like health or education, is a prerequisite to reducing inequalities. It could also play a central role both in preventing climate change (for instance, by having locally accessible services) and building a sustainable response to the effects of the ecological breakdown.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the social and economic crises it has triggered have further exposed and exacerbated the inequalities generated by privatisation and have confirmed the importance of the equalising and redistributive power of robust public services. This is a crucial time to explore and clarify the human rights position on ESCR-related services.
What are States’ human rights obligations with regard to the delivery of public services? This is what this ongoing research on the international normative framework responds to. The first brief was published on 19 October 2020. This page presents the full methodology, data, and will be updated when new research is produced.
The first brief is based on a review of concluding observations of UN human rights treaty bodies, country and thematic reports of UN special procedures and reports of the Universal Periodic Review between 2007 and 2020 as available on https://uhri.ohchr.org/, and on a review of general comments and statements of UN human rights treaty bodies between 1990 and 2020 as available on https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/Pages/TBGeneralComments.aspx.
Relevant extracts were selected by using keywords related to public services. We strictly selected extracts that directly or indirectly supported the understanding of a State obligation to deliver public services, or that indicated human rights requirements for public services, and did not keep general statements merely alluding to public services. We analysed the extracts containing one or more of these words or phrases in terms of what they indicated regarding the position of human rights law on public services. These extracts were the basis for this brief. We added other examples that were not captured by the research where we considered this added value.
The full methodology for the first brief is available here.
Methodology
The Brief
The brief States’ Human Rights Obligations Regarding Public Services: The United Nations normative Framework was published on 19 October 2020. It is available on this link.
The full data from the research are available to download from this link.