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Global Initiative for ESCR - Annual Report 2012

Global Initiative for ESCR - Annual Report 2012

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Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights - Annual Report 2012

 

Annual Report 2012

Message from the Co-Executive Directors

Advocates for economic, social and cultural human rights (ESC rights) have a lot to be proud of.  More than any other area of human rights, these rights have advanced markedly over the past two decades. International human rights bodies are increasingly developing the content of these rights; legal advocates and social activists are working diligently to enforce these rights at national as well as international levels; and some of the largest and most influential human rights organizations in the world – organizations like Amnesty International which used to be solely focused on protecting civil and political rights – have begun to embrace the ‘full spectrum of human rights,’ recognizing that violations of ESC rights represent some of the worst human rights crises of our time. These have all been substantial transformations which have moved ESC rights from the margins toward the fore of the human rights movement.

Yet, despite these advances, the reality for billions of people around the world is a continuing and systematic lack of access to basic rights, with devastating consequences day in and day out for the world’s poor. The truth is that all of us today live in an era of unprecedented inequality, and of unprecedented levels of global poverty. Sadly, there remains a stark chasm between the standards which exist protecting ESC rights, and their actual enjoyment on the ground.

In order to find solutions aimed at closing the gap and to discuss unmet needs in the field, in late 2011 the GI-ESCR convened a small brain trust of experts, advocates and leaders working across the human rights, development, women’s rights and the environmental justice sector. This strategy meeting allowed us to think collectively about some of the most pressing challenges facing the global movement for ESC rights, as well as how the GI-ESCR as a new organization seeking to engage in new ways, can work in concert with our partners to help overcome those challenges. The activities carried out over the course of 2012, and reported here, reflect those discussions and have continued to deepen collaborations with our partners.

The meeting identified critical tasks for the ESC Rights movement, including: (1) building and deepening cross-sector alliances (particularly with respect to the development, women’s rights, and the environmental sectors); (2) ensuring that poor and marginalized communities are well equipped with knowledge of their rights, and well positioned to claim them; (3) developing and sharing tools which demonstrate how ESC rights can be respected, protected and fulfilled in practice; and (4) braving new frontiers in standard-setting and enforcement.  These are the threads that bind together our advocacy, and which set the stage for our achievements in 2012.

With these broader tasks in mind, in 2012 the GI-ESCR embarked upon its first full year of operations, and we are proud to say that we have achieved significant outcomes from our work – outcomes we see laying the foundation for transformative impact on the ground. These outcomes were realized across all three of our strategic priorities – namely strategic litigation and legal advocacy; advancing women’s and ESC rights; and human rights and development. While details of this work are listed below under the respective strategic priorities, there is overlap as the GI-ESCR strives for work at the intersection of these priorities. The GI-ESCR also works to incorporate advocacy in the area of environmental rights within all three priorities, particularly when the environment has an impact on human dignity.

Results in the area of strategic litigation include the first ever recognition by the UN Human Rights Committee of extra-territorial obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) as well as the issuance of the first ever permanent injunction under the ICCPR preventing a threatened forced eviction and the first ever order for positive obligations related to connection of water services. These achievements have changed the landscape of ESC rights protection at the international level by using the principle of indivisibility of all human rights. These results are part of our continued efforts to ensure that those that violate housing rights – as well as the rights related to access to water and sanitation –are held accountable by the UN Human Rights Committee as violations under ICCPR. These successes before the UN Human Rights Committee have ensured that the principle of indivisibility of rights has real meaning and has expanded avenues for social rights enforcement under the ICCPR. A range of human rights advocates have already begun to use this expanded space for human rights accountability and remedies in their own respective advocacy, and we are proud to have helped pave the way.

In the area of women’s ESC rights, the GI-ESCR has played a vital role in the advancement of women’s land, housing and property rights at both international and regional levels. We believe that these rights are fundamental to improving women’s lives and to ensuring gender equality, and they cut across many of the sectors we seek to engage through the GI-ESCR. Here, we have sought to create and strengthen a coherent set of progressive norms and standards which can be used by advocates to orchestrate change on behalf of women’s rights to housing, land and other productive resources at various levels. In 2012, the GI-ESCR convened various panel discussions and strategic meetings on these issues, and engaged extensively with the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and UN-Women on these issues, including by preparing a background paper on women’s land rights for an Expert Group Meeting convened in 2012 by these two agencies which serves as the basis of a forthcoming UN Handbook. The GI-ESCR also stepped up advocacy efforts with the UN Human Rights Committee and the UN Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW Committee) on these issues, including by facilitating access for grassroots women, with very positive results and strong Concluding Observations from both Committees on women’s right related to housing, land and other productive resources.

In the area of human rights and development, we have continued to advocate for a post-2015 development paradigm that fully incorporates the human rights framework, and ESC rights in particular. For instance, working with the Landesa Center for Women’s Land Rights, the GI-ESCR contributed to consultations around the post-2015 Millennium Development Goal agenda through publication of a paper on women and land rights. 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. The GI-ESCR also produced the first of its Briefing Papers on the human rights-based approach to development in the areas of water, participation, land, women migrant workers, and family planning. These papers not only discuss the rights-based approach with respect to these areas, but offer real world examples of how governments and other actors can best implement development plans within the human rights framework and the value of doing so.

Lastly, during 2012, the GI-ESCR also continued to carry forward the housing rights expertise that formally was housed at the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE). Work related to housing rights included drafting a paper on the legal and jurisprudential aspects of security of tenure for the Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, participating in an Expert Group Meeting on security of tenure convened by the Special Rapporteur, moderating the Gender Assembly at UN Habitat’s Sixth World Urban Forum, participating at the Gender Round Table at the World Urban Forum, and participating at the African Union – European Union Civil Society Human Rights Seminar. The GI-ESCR has also continued with the ongoing strategic litigation for which COHRE had been responsible, including cases before the UN Human Rights Committee and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

We are also happy to report that we have ended the 2012 fiscal year on a sound financial footing which lays the foundation for organizational growth in 2013 and beyond. We look forward to the GI-ESCR’s continued work and engagement with our partners worldwide to ensure that all of the gains we have achieve so far continue to move us toward the transformative impact we seek.

Mayra Gomez and Bret Thiele

Co-Executive Directors

GI–ESCR

Access a full copy of the Annual Report here.

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Climate and Environmental Justice

We have advanced rights-based and gender-transformative transition frameworks through research that centres the lived experiences of women and marginalised communities on the frontlines of extractive energy policies, promoting climate and energy frameworks attentive to the social and care-related impacts of transition pathways. We have developed a clear vision for a gender-just transition, firmly rooted in gender and human rights norms, establishing both the legal basis and the direction for the transformative changes our planet and societies urgently need. In particular, the ‘Guiding Principles for Gender Equality and Human Rights in the Energy Transition’, a collective effort built through online consultations, an in-person workshop and multiple rounds of revision with activists, practitioners and experts from around the world, outline a transformative vision for reshaping global energy systems through a human rights and gender equality lens.

Our work recognises that the climate emergency is both an existential threat and an opportunity to reimagine societies built on social, gender, economic and environmental justice. We ground our advocacy in feminist and intersectional principles, prioritising the agency and perspectives of communities in the Global South who have contributed the least to the climate emergency yet face its most devastating consequences. Central to our approach is the understanding that energy is not merely a commodity but a fundamental human right; essential for dignity, health, education, work and the realisation of countless other rights. We challenge approaches to the energy transition that risk replicating the harmful patterns of fossil fuel extraction and, instead, advocate for transformative policies that ensure human rights and gender equality as central to building climate-resilient societies rooted in dignity, justice and planetary well-being.

What's next?

We will continue to challenge approaches that treat energy transition as merely a technical shift, instead positioning it as an opportunity to reimagine economies and societies rooted in dignity for all, with particular attention to communities in the Global South who have contributed least to the climate emergency yet are most exposed to its worst effects.

We will connect community-level evidence and the lived experiences of those on the frontlines of extractive policies to national reform and global norm-setting, breaking down silos between human rights, gender, and climate movements, and advancing a shared vision that recognises just transitions as not only fundamental to achieving climate-resilient and sustainable societies, but as transformative pathways that advance social and gender equality, redistribute power and resources equitably, and ensure that energy systems serve the public good rather than profit.

We will mainstream rights-based and genderjust transition priorities in key multilateral spaces (particularly, within the Just Transition Work Programme and the to-be-developed Just Transition Mechanism, within the UNFCCC) to guarantee that just transitions are advanced at all levels.

We will also translate our work, through strategic advocacy, into at least two concrete policy wins, whether promoted, adopted, implemented, or scaled, in priority countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Colombia, South Africa, or Kenya), ensuring these policies align with human rights standards, centre gender equality, and reflect the needs and views of affected communities.

We will build momentum for the progressive recognition of the right to sustainable energy to shift dominant narratives away from purely extractive solutions that sideline gendered impacts, community participation, and Global South perspectives.

Economic Justice and Climate Finance

Our work has transformed the global discussion on fiscal policy in a more just, emancipatory and sustainable direction. Our approach has combined both high-level, expert contributions within decisionmaking circles, with bold, impactful work on narrative change with the general public.

We have been instrumental in the inclusion of human rights as a guiding principle of the future United Nations Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation, a multilateral instrument with the potential of raising approx. USD 492 billion per year in public revenues currently foregone to global tax abuse. In the process leading to the ‘Compromiso de Sevilla’ decided at FfD4, we proposed and succeeded in creating a specific human rights workstream within the Civil Society Financing for Development Mechanism, which was critical to ensure that explicit commitments on the matter were included in the negotiating outcome. In a context of cutbacks in multilateral institutions, we have amplified the capacities of technical experts, providing rigorous technical support and leveraging our influence to ensure the enactments of groundbreaking standard-setting instruments, such as the 2025 UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Statement on Fiscal Policy and Human Rights, and the first ex oficio hearing on the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights on Fiscal and Economic Policies to Address Poverty and Structural Inequality, leading to an upcoming thematic resolution on the matter. We have also bridged the silos between multilateral tax discussions and climate finance debates, promoting ambitious financing commitments to increase international and domestic resource mobilisation during COP 28, 29 and 30.

At the regional level, our engagement with fiscal cooperation platforms such as the Platform for Fiscal Cooperation of Latin America and the Caribbean (PTLAC), where we are member of its Civil Society Consultative Council, and the African Anti-IFFs Policy Tracker, for which we participated in the pilot mission in Ivory Coast together with Tax Justice Network Africa (TJNA), have been critical in cementing a growing engagement between tax administrations and ministries of finance with international legal experts, exploring actionable and transformative initiatives, such as the taxation of high-net-worth individuals, beneficial ownership registries and corporate countryby-country reports, to be implemented at the international level.

At the local level, our interventions in fiscal reform debates in Chile, Brazil, Colombia and Nigeria have contributed to shaping legislative outcomes in a more progressive, rights-compliant direction.

As for our leadership in narrative change, we have a measurable track record in delivering tailored, innovative campaigns which have decisively expanded economic justice constituencies by appealing to a broader tent. In Latin America and the Caribbean, we created the ‘Date Cuenta’ campaign, coordinating over 40 organisations across civil society to deliver plain language, innovative messaging connecting progressive fiscal reforms to the financing of health, education and social protection. ‘Date Cuenta’ generated over 55 original campaign messages that were tailored to the realities of seven priority countries (Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru and Honduras) and disseminated in Spanish, Portuguese and English. In doing so, we convened more than 65 online co-creation workshops with partners, coordinating a unified communications strategy which combined digital outreach, press and media coverage, and collaboration with influencers. Ultimately, ‘Date Cuenta’ resulted in more than 60,000 interactions on social media, coverage in major regional and international media outlets, including El País, Deutsche Welle, Bloomberg and France 24, and the participation of at least 63 social media influencers through 58 dedicated publications. In collaboration with Fundación Gabo and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, we also organised a two-day workshop in Bogota with 20 journalists from 13 countries, building a regional network trained in a human rights-based approach to fiscal policy that has since generated published media coverage on outlets such as La Diaria, Ciper, El Diario Ar and Milenio. Through ‘Date Cuenta’ and our regional advocacy, we strengthened civil society engagement in key processes, including the Financing for Development track and FfD4, co-organised highlevel dialogues with states and civil society from Latin America and Africa.

What's next?

We will shape the UN Tax Convention and its Protocols so they embed human rights principles, and we will stay engaged through follow-up processes (including the expected Conference of the Parties) to support effective implementation. We will keep linking tax and climate finance so that new resources mobilised through fiscal cooperation are channelled to adaptation, mitigation, and loss and damage, in line with UNFCCC commitments.

Public Services for Care Societies

We have translated participatory research into accountability and policy outcomes.

In Ivory Coast, our work with Mouvement Ivoirien des Droits Humains and affected communities since 2023 exposed how privatisation and lack of accountability restrict access to quality healthcare. It contributed to the closure of 1,022 illegal private health centres, an executive instrument strengthening the regulation of private hospitals across the country, and the creation of a permanent complaints management committee in healthcare through a bylaw issued by the prefect of Gagnoa. Partners engaged through this process also advanced concrete improvements at facility level: members of the Gagnoa Midwives Association who took part in the participatory action research pooled resources to renovate the neonatal unit of the Regional Hospital, and the Director of the Gagnoa General Hospital launched an action plan to expand services and improve patient reception, with the facility receiving the award for best hospital in the country in 2025.

In Kenya, our research with the Mathare Education Taskforce documented the absence of public schools and the expansion of private provision, evidencing impacts on households and caregivers and strengthening demands for free, quality public education. This work contributed to stronger community agency and collective organisation, alongside ongoing strategies ranging from communications to litigation to secure a public school in the area, some involving GI-ESCR and others led independently.

Across Africa, this work is complemented by a multi-country study examining the human rights implications of austerity in education and health, including how regressive fiscal policies, rising debt burdens and persistent underinvestment undermine the financing and delivery of public services.

In Latin America, from 29 November to 2 December 2021, over a thousand representatives from over one hundred countries, from grassroots movements, advocacy, human rights, and development organisations, feminist movements, trade unions, and other civil society organisations, met in Santiago, Chile, and virtually, to discuss the critical role of public services for our future. Following the meeting, the Santiago Declaration on Public Services was adopted to demand universal access to quality, gender-transformative and equitable public services as the foundation of a fair and just society.

We are currently advancing work on care systems, linking public services and fiscal justice through integrated research, advocacy and communications, including a regional campaign framing care as a collective responsibility requiring sustained public investment.

What's next?

In Ivory Coast, we will evaluate and strengthen the complaints management committee and position it as a replicable model for other health facilities. In Kenya, we will support the Mathare community to co-design a model public school for Mabatini and Ngei wards, grounded in human rights standards. Building on our multi-country austerity study, we will drive national advocacy on financing for education and health: advancing reforms in Ghana; launching a fiscal policy and public services financing agenda in Kenya through the CESCR process and targeted coalition work; and, in Nigeria, using the new tax acts in force since 1 January 2026 to catalyse a national accountability campaign for adequately funded, quality public services. In Latin America, we will amplify locally led care pilots across 8 countries and turn lessons into influence—advancing care policies that strengthen care organisations, protect care workers’ rights, support unpaid caregivers, include disability and family networks, and redistribute care more equitably.