Geneva Updates
Our strategic presence in Geneva sets us apart as the sole NGO exclusively committed to economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights. This permits us to play a pivotal role in promoting and protecting these rights globally.
Women's Land and Property Rights and the Post-2015 Development Agenda
The Global Initiative on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (GI-ESCR), along with its partner the Landesa Center for Women’s Land Rights, contributed to consultations around the post-2015 Millennium Development Goal agenda. Together, the GI-ESCR and Landesa presented a paper on Women's Land and Property Rights and the Post-2015 Development Agenda. The paper provided detailed information on the current state of women's rights to access, use of, and control over land and other resources. The paper pointed out that just as “discrimination against women and girls impairs progress in all other areas of development,” gender inequality in secure rights to land and property impedes progress in achieving inclusive economic and social development, environmental sustainability, and peace and security – dimensions the UN System Task Team on the Post-2015 UN Development Agenda identified as requiring progress to build an equitable, secure, and sustainable world.
Secure rights to land and property for women are widely regarded as fundamental to ensuring effective and sustainable human development. Rights to land and property include the right to own, use, access, control, transfer, exclude, inherit and otherwise make decisions about land and related resources. Secure rights to land are rights that are clearly defined, long-term, enforceable, appropriately transferable, and legally and socially legitimate. For women, exercising these rights should not require consultation or approval beyond that required of men.
Globally, there is an evident correlation between gender inequality, societal poverty, and the failure to respect, protect and fulfill these rights for women. This failure entrenches gender inequality by reinforcing women’s dependence on men, and prevents poor countries from finding a sustainable and equitable path to development. Strengthening women’s secure rights to land can help empower them to reach their potential as citizens and as economic actors, and enable them to take control over their own lives.
In its recommendations, the paper advocates for the inclusion of targets specifically related to women’s land and property rights in the post-2015 development agenda.
The paper is available HERE.
Call for Input: Right to participation of persons living in poverty
Participation of persons living in poverty
At the 23rd session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (June 2013), the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Magdalena Sepúlveda, will submit a report on the human rights approach to participation of persons living in poverty in decisions that affect their lives.
The right to participate is reflected in numerous international instruments, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (art. 25), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (arts. 13.1 and 15.1), Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (art. 7), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (art. 12), the Declaration on the Right to Development (arts. 1.1, 2 and 8.2), the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (art. 5, 18, 19 and 41) and the Millennium Declaration (para. 25).
Poverty has many dimensions, extending far beyond a lack of income to include deprivation of choices, capabilities and power. Persons experiencing extreme poverty live in a vicious cycle of powerlessness, stigmatization, discrimination, exclusion and material deprivation. Lack of participation in decision-making is thus a defining feature and cause of poverty, rather than just its consequence.
Participation is an affirmation of the right of every individual and group to take part in the conduct of public affairs, but also a part of the solution to poverty and social exclusion. Anti-poverty and development policies are more likely to be effective, sustainable, inclusive and equitable if they are the result of participatory processes. Participatory methods are important tools for empowerment, accountability and ending the cycle of deprivation and dependency in favour of the autonomy and social inclusion of persons living in poverty.
The objectives of the report are: 1) to map the obstacles that people living in poverty face in meaningful and effective participation in the design, implementation and evaluation of public policy and development interventions; 2) provide guidelines on how to increase the participation of persons living in poverty in domestic policies as well as in international development.
While participation is considered one of the key principles of a human rights-based approach to development and poverty reduction, little attention has been given to the practical elements required to ensure meaningful and effective participation of persons living in poverty. The report will seek to give more substantive content to normative frameworks and key principles, drawing lessons from existing participatory processes undertaken by States at different levels, including by local governments, in a whole range of areas, including public service delivery, social housing, development interventions, welfare programmes, social protection and budgetary processes.
The Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Magdalena Sepúlveda, invites States, United Nations departments and agencies, national human rights institutions, civil society organizations, individuals living in poverty and social exclusion and other relevant stakeholders to send contributions to the report.
The questionnaire sent by the Special Rapporteur to States can be accessed here: E F S
Please submit contributions electronically to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights through
GI-ESCR elected to the Steering Committee of the Midwest Coalition for Human Rights
The Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (GI-ESCR) has been elected to a two-year term on the Steering Committee of the Midwest Coalition for Human Rights. The Midwest Coalition for Human Rights is a network of 56 organizations, service providers, and university centers, that work together to promote and protect human rights in our Midwest region. Through collaboration in the Heartland, we advocate, educate and take action with a strong regional voice on national and international human rights issues.
The Midwest Coalition uses the standards found in international human rights treaties, declarations, and customary norms to guide its work.
The Midwest Coalition works as a network to share information, to respond collectively to urgent human rights issues, to conduct joint investigations, and to sponsor educational programs.
The Coalition recently decided to address issues of social and economic justice in the United States from a human rights perspective, and sought out the GI-ESCR for its expertise in advocating for economic, social and cultural rights.
GI-ESCR and FIDA-Kenya Advocate for Women's Housing and Land Rights before the Human Rights Committee
In July 2012, the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (GI-ESCR) partnered with the Federation of Women Lawyers - Kenya (FIDA-Kenya) to draft a Parallel Report addressing Kenya's obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The report addressed discrimination against women in the areas of housing as well as access to, control over and the use of land and other productive resources.
The report was submitted to the Human Rights Committee in July and the GI-ESCR facilitated FIDA-Kenya's participation at the Human Rights Committee during its 105th session in Geneva. The GI-ESCR and FIDA-Kenya participated in both a formal meeting with the Human Rights Committee as well as an informal follow up meeting, and also were able to meet with individual Committee members. The issues brought to the attention of the Committee by the GI-ESCR and FIDA-Kenya resonated with the Committee and the governments delegation from Kenya was questioned repeatedly about discrimination against women and women's equal protection of the law.
Specific issues included women's equal rights related to access to, control over and use of land; women's equal rights in the area of inheritance; and domestic violence and housing rights.
Responding to our interventions, the Committee voiced its regret that the Law of Succession Act discriminates between the property interests of widows and widowers and that Kenya has yet to pass Matrimonial Property bill which would end that discrimination. Consequently, the Committee recommended that Kenya revise the Law on Succession Act to guarantee equality between men and women in the devolution and succession of property after death of a spouse and that it also enact legislation reforming its matrimonial property law.
The Committee also condemned forced evictions from land used for traditional livelihood purposes and urged Kenya to implement the decision of the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights in the case of Centre for Minority Rights Development (Kenya) and Minority Rights Group International on behalf of Endorois Welfare Council v Kenya.
The Joint Parallel Report can be found HERE.
The Concluding Observations of the Human Rights Committee are HERE.
See the Press Release from the Civil and Political Rights Centre HERE.
GI-ESCR elected to the Steering Committee of the Extra-Territorial Obligations Consortium
The Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (GI-ESCR) was elected by its peers to join the Steering Committee of the Extra-Territorial Obligations Consortium. The GI-ESCR is pleased to join its colleagues and partners who also have been elected to the Steering Committee and looks forward to contributing to guiding the ETO Consortium in the coming years, including following up on the detailed recommendations arrived at during the Consortium's recent meeting in Geneva. The ETO Consortium is a network of leading human rights organizations, university institutes, civil society organizations and institution-based individuals. Its purpose is to address the current shortcomings of human rights interpretation in a globalization context by mainstreaming states’ extraterritorial obligations.
The Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has been a member of the ETO Consortium since the GI-ESCR's founding and provides expertise to the Consortium’s IFI and Development Cooperation Focal Group as well as on strategic litigation.
For more information on the work of the GI-ESCR in this area see HERE.
For detailed information on Extra-Territorial Obligations and human rights see:
Maastricht Principles on Extra-Territorial Obligations and the Commentary to the Maastricht Principles on Extra-Territorial Obligations
Also see the FIAN flyer on ETOs HERE.
GI-ESCR joins Urgent Call to Action on the Human Rights to Water and Sanitation
The Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has joined WASH United and twenty-one other organization to urgently call on States to renew previous commitments to the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation in the outcome document of the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development.
We are deeply concerned that the current draft of the outcome document departs from commitments that virtually all States have already made. In 2010, the UN General Assembly and the UN Human Rights Council recognized that the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation is part of international human rights law. In May 2011, the World Health Assembly, where all UN Member States are represented, adopted by consensus a resolution which included the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation.
As the third round of ‘informal-informal’ negotiations of the Rio+20 outcome document is under discussion in New York, we call on all States to demonstrate again the political consensus that has already been achieved. We urgently call upon States to use the following language in the Rio+20 outcome document:
The Paragraph “Water 1” of the outcome document should read as follows:
“We recognize the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of life and all human rights. We commit to the progressive realization of universal access to safe drinking water and sanitation for all. In this regard, we reaffirm our commitment to increase access to safe drinking water and sanitation in accordance with our goal to halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. We also reaffirm our commitment to the 2005-2015 International Decade for Action “Water for Life”.”
The new proposed paragraph on a target for achieving universal access to water and sanitation should read as follows:
“By 2030, achieve access to safe and affordable drinking water and sanitation for all, without discrimination, in sufficient quantities to protect human health and dignity, particularly for the most marginalized.”
The outcome document of the Rio+20 Conference will shape the future direction of development at all levels. It is uncontested that access to safe drinking water and sanitation is a fundamental pre-condition for overall sustainable development. In Rio, States have the opportunity to take a big step towards realizing the vision of safe drinking water and sanitation for all people - particularly the poorest and most marginalized - by integrating the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation into the outcome document. Without this step, international efforts to achieve sustainable development will risk failure.
UPDATE: Rio+20: Canada, Last Holdout, Drops Opposition to Water as Human Right
New ESCR-Net Publication: Seeding Hope? Land in the International Human Rights Agenda
ESCR-Net is pleased to announce the publication of "Seeding Hope? Land in the International Human Rights Agenda: Challenges and Prospects," developed together with the International Council on Human Rights Policy.
This paper was developed in response to a mandate that grew out of a gathering of ESCR-Net’s Social Movements Working Group in Brazil in 2010, where participants called on the Network to explore ways to reinforce and advance efforts to strengthen an international recognition of human rights to lands and territories. It highlights several issues that are currently being explored by the human rights community with regards to land and explores some possible approaches going forward. With a particular focus on the need to understand and elevate the demands of social movements, the paper recommends some principles to guide work toward a collaborative human rights agenda on land.
The findings reflect a broad range of informal consultations with a large number of ESCR-Net members, including in a meeting held in Geneva in September. ESCR-Net is particularly grateful to six members who served as expert readers prior to the paper’s publication: Bret Thiele (The Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights), Fernando Gallardo Viera Prioste (Terra de Direitos), Jill-Carr Harris (Ekta Parishad), Magdalena Sepulveda (International Council on Human Rights Policy), Sandra Ratjen (International Commission of Jurists) and Sofia Monsalve (FIAN).
The publication will be available in other languages soon at ESCR-Net.
Guatemala: Holding the World Bank Accountable for Human Rights Violations
The Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (GI-ESCR) together with Rights Action and the International Human Rights Clinic at Western New England University School of Law has filed a Petition before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in an attempt to hold the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) accountable for human rights violations that occurred during the construction of the Chixoy hydroelectric dam in Guatemala. In May 2012, the same organizations filed a Supplemental Brief to the Inter-American Commission that addressed various admissibility issues including jurisdiction over the Member States of the World Bank and IDB that have human rights obligations within the inter-American human rights system.
Several Maya Achi villages were forcibly evicted, some through a series of brutal massacres, to make way for the construction of the Chixoy Dam in the 1980s. The case highlights the complicity of international financial institutions (IFIs), in particular the World Bank and the IDB, in the brutal removal of indigenous communities from their lands in Guatemala.
According to Grahame Russell, Co-Executive Director of Rights Action, “Almost 30 years after the so-called completion of the Chixoy Dam project, no reparations or compensation have been provided, whatsoever, to the thousands of Maya Achi families, from 32 communities, whose lives and livelihoods were illegally harmed and destroyed.”
Bret Thiele, Co-Executive Director of the GI-ESCR, said that “Several States that make up the decision-making bodies at the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank have human rights obligations under the inter-American human rights system, including extra-territorial obligations, and there is sound legal foundation for holding them accountable for their roles in the egregious human rights violations that occurred during their management of the Chixoy dam project.”
While attempting to hold IFIs accountable for human rights violations before regional human rights mechanisms is novel, the case is grounded in the International Law Commission’s Articles on Responsibility of International Organizations as well as the recently adopted Maastricht Principles on Extra-Territorial Obligations. As the Petition argues, the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank are made up of States, all of which have human rights obligations. These States should not be able to ignore, or indeed violate, these obligations simply by organizing themselves into international financial institutions or by using those institutions as agents to carry out policies or practices that violate their respective international human rights obligations.
Grahamme Russell added that the Petition would be supported by a grassroots effort to hold the Banks accountable as well as to ensure that the Inter-American Commission exercises its authority to hold Member States of the OAS that sit on the decision-making bodies of the Banks accountable for human rights violations.
View the Petition (Request for Appeal) to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights HERE.
View the Supplemental Brief to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights HERE.
NOTE: The Petition is an appeal of an earlier case brought before the Inter-American Commission and includes updated factual information and legal analysis.
Threatened forced eviction of the the Dobri Jeliazkov community (Sofia, Bulgaria)
The Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (GI-ESCR), along with its Bulgarian partner Equal Opportunities Association (EOA), represent the Dobri Jeliazkov community in Sofia, Bulgaria in their struggle to prevent the forced eviction of their community. The Dobri Jeliazkov community consists of impoverished Roma and has been in existence for over 70 years.
Currently 34 individuals live in the community, 15 of whom are minor children. The Dobri Jeliazkov community faced imminent forced eviction and destruction of their homes in July 2011, when the GI-ESCR and EOA launched a case before the Human Rights Committee that resulted in the first ever Interim Measures by the Committee to prevent a forced eviction. Until last month, those Interim Measures had been effective. That case, Ms. Naidenova et al. v. Republic of Bulgaria, Communication No. 2073/2011, is still pending.
Now, in an attempt to forcibly evict the Dobri Jeliazkov community, on 29 April 2012 the Municipality of Sofia had the water company, Sofiyska voda, cut off the water supply to the Dobri Jeliazkov community. The community now has no access to running water. The GI-ESCR urgently notified the Human Rights Committee of the situation as well as the Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, the Special Rapporteur on the rights to water and sanitation, the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, and the Independent Expert on Minority Issues requesting that they intervene with the Republic of Bulgaria and urge it to abide by its obligations to protect and to ensure the human rights of the Dobri Jeliazkov community, including by directing the relevant authorities, including the Municipality of Sofia and the water company, Sofiyska voda, immediately to reconnect access to water for the Dobri Jeliazkov community.
For more information, including relevant case filings, see HERE.
Those who want to protest these latest human right violations can direct letters to:
Sofia Municipality
Yordanka Fandakova, Mayor of Sofia
Street "Moskovska" No 33
1000 Sofia
Bulgaria
Commission for Protection against Discrimination
Kemal Eub, Chairperson
bul. “Dragan Tsankov “ 35
1125 Sofia
Bulgaria
UPDATE:
On 9 May 2012 the Human Rights Committee intervened with the Government of Bulgaria and reminded it "not to evict Ms. Liliana Naidenova et a.l., and not to demolish their dwellings, while their case is under consideration by the Committee." The Committee also stated that "While Ms. Liliana Naidenova et al. have not been forcibly evicted, cutting off the water supply to the Dobri Jeliazkov community could be considered an indirect means of achieving eviction." The Committee consequently called upon the Government of Bulgaria to ensure that the water supply be re-established to the Dobri Jeliazkov community.
