“Economic, social, and environmental rights in Chile’s constitutional process” - HRC50 side event

In the context of the 50th regular session of the Human Rights Council, the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (GI-ESCR) together with the Geneva Academy, organised a side event to analyse from a human rights perspective the key risks and challenges, and opportunities arising from the Chilean Constitutional process.

In October 2019, massive social unrest erupted in Chile. The protests included rallies across the country demanding a new social, economic and environmental pact. In response, political parties across the spectrum agreed to channel the social conflict through an institutional process to replace the 1980 Constitution. The 80’s Constitution was adopted during the military regime of Augusto Pinochet and even though it was reformed in 2005, it retains the ideological fingerprints of Chile’s dictatorship. 

In late 2020, an overwhelming majority of Chileans (78%) voted in support of a new Constitution amid strong demands for dignity and economic justice that linger since the social unrest.  

After 10 months of work, the Chilean Constitutional Convention has finished the draft of the new Constitution, shifting towards a human rights respecting, gender inclusive and climate-sensitive constitutional framework. Among its innovative provisions, the draft proposal enshrines a long list of economic, social, cultural and environmental rights; ensures gender parity and equality clauses across government branches; recognise rights and autonomy for indigenous peoples; and recognises as a duty of the State to put in place prevention, adaptation and mitigation measures to halt the climate emergency.  

The constitution will be put to a mandatory national referendum on September 4th in which all Chilean people 18 and older must vote in favour or against the proposal. If the proposed text is rejected, the Pinochet-era constitution will remain in place. Due to its transformative character, the new Constitution can be a pioneer in rethinking constitutional frameworks while addressing current global contexts where there are historical levels of inequality, a pressing climate crisis and serious threats of successive crises such those being generated by the COVID-19 pandemic.  

Panelists:  

• Dr. Christophe Golay, Senior Research Fellow and Strategic Adviser on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights at the Geneva Academy.  

• Dr. Javier Couso, Professor of Law at the?Universidad Diego Portales?in Santiago, Chile, and Professor of Global Trends in Constitutionalism at the University of Utrecht, Netherlands.  

• Dr. Koldo Casla, Lecturer in Law and the Director of the Human Rights Centre Clinic, University of Essex (UK).  

• MSc Valentina Contreras, Representative in Chile of the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

Moderator:

• Dr. Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona, Executive Director of the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Former United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights (2008-2012). 

Dr. Christophe Golay: Dr. Christophe Golay is Senior Research Fellow and Strategic Adviser on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights at the Geneva Academy. He is Visiting Professor at the Geneva Graduate Institute. Since 2015, Dr. Golay is supervising the legal dimension of two research projects on the right to food in Bolivia, Cambodia, Ghana and Kenya. Since 2009, he has been providing legal advice on elaborating and implementing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas. From 2001 to 2008, he was Legal Adviser to the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food and undertook missions with the UN in Brazil, Guatemala, Bolivia, Cuba, Niger, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, India and Palestine. His PhD dissertation focused on the right to food and access to justice. He was a member of the Constituent Assembly who drafted the new Constitution of the Republic and State of Geneva.

Dr. Koldo Casla: Dr Koldo Casla is a Lecturer in Law and the Director of the Human Rights Centre Clinic of the University of Essex. Before joining Essex, he was a Research Associate at the Institute of Health & Society of Newcastle University, where he co-drafted the first Bill on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in the UK (2017-19), Policy Director of the social rights NGO Just Fair (2016-19), and author of four Amnesty International reports on the rights to health, education and housing in Spain (2013-19). Casla is the author of Politics of International Human Rights Law Promotion in Western Europe: Order versus Justice (Routledge 2019) and Spain and Its Achilles' Heels: The Strong Foundations of a Country's Weaknesses (Rowman & Littlefield 2021), and the co-editor of Social Rights and the Constitutional Moment: Learning from Chile and International Experiences (Hart 2022).

MSc Valentina Contreras Valentina Contreras is the Representative of the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in Chile. She holds an MSc in Human Rights from the London School of Economics (LSE), an LLB from the Universidad de Chile and a degree in Probity, Transparency and Good Governance from the Pontificia Universidad Cat?lica de Chile. From 2014 till 2020, Valentina worked as a lawyer at the Research Department of the Supreme Court of Chile in areas related to the enhancement of the right of access to justice. She previously worked as a lawyer in consumer law class actions and as a volunteer in technological education projects in Chile’s rural areas.

Dr. Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona is the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Executive Director. Magdalena is a human rights lawyer with vast experience in economic, social and cultural rights. In her 20-year career, Magdalena has focused on the intersection of poverty, development and human rights and has bridged research and policy formulation. She has worked as a researcher at the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights, as a staff attorney at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, as the Co-Director of the Department of International Law and Human Rights of the United Nations-mandated University for Peace in Costa Rica and as a Research Director at the International Council on Human Rights Policy, in Geneva. She was a Senior Research Fellow at UNRISD. From 2008 to 2014 Magdalena was the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights. From 2013 to 2017 she was a member of the High-Level Panel of Expert on Food Security and Nutrition of the United Nations Committee on World Food Security (CFS).