The Project on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESCR Project) provides academic research, legal and policy expertise and advice, teaching and training for students and professionals, and resources and publications for a variety of audiences on economic, social and cultural rights.
Academic research and legal and policy advice The ESCR Project provides academic expertise and legal advice to a variety of audiences, including the UN Human Rights Council’s Advisory Committee and the Special Procedures that address economic, social and cultural rights, as well as to academia, students, NGOs, diplomats, UN staff, courts and tribunals and UN Treaty Bodies.
The ESCR Project plays an important role in facilitating the understanding and development of legal and policy issues related to ESCR by providing input and by offering the space for brainstorming and discussion among experts in the field and the wider public. Along these lines, a series of successful events have been organized in the last years: - Together with the NGO 3D, the ESCR Project hosted in May 2009 a seminar on “The Global Land Grab: A Human Rights Approach”, which attracted great interest from UN Special Procedure, members of different treaty bodies and representatives of UN agencies and other researchers. - In June 2009, the third volume of the Swiss Human Rights Books focusing on Realizing the Rights to Health was launched. The International Symposium organized with this occasion benefitted from the participation of world experts on the right to health, such as Mary Robinson, Chair of the GAVI Alliance, Mary Crewe, Director for the Centre of the Study of AIDS at the University of Pretoria, Eibe Riedel, Swiss Chair of Human Rights and Member of the UN Committee on ESCR.
- With the support of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, an expert seminar was hosted in July 2009, on the role and impact of the UN Special Procedures in the implementation of economic, social and cultural rights law and practice. Former and current Special Rapporteurs and Independent Experts, researchers having worked or working as advisers to special procedures and staff from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights were present at the expert meeting. - In March 2010, the ESCR Project hosted the conference “A New Initiative to Protect the Right of Peasants”, chaired by Jean Ziegler and having as distinguished guest speakers Prof. Olivier de Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, H.E. Jean Feyder, Ambassador of Luxembourg to the UN, Sandra Ratjen, Advocacy Coordinator of FIAN International and Henry Saragih, International Coordinator of La Via Campesina.
The ESCR Project is setting up on an online Monitor of Developments in ESC Rights Law and Practice. The ESCR Monitor aims to provide information and analysis about new developments, publications, events and activities in the world of economic, social and cultural rights and will be launched in 2010 (subject to funding). Teaching and training The ESCR Project offers teaching, training, short courses and further education on ESC rights for graduate students, diplomats, staff of international organisations, non-governmental organisations and national human rights commissions. As part of its training activities, the ESCR Project organizes an annual Executive Education Training Course on Monitoring Economic, Social and Cultural Rights addressed to professionals working in ESC rights, including advocates, researchers, managers of human rights organizations and field workers. Offered since 2008, this week-long program has proven very successful: over 350 applicants have submitted their files for the 2010 session, competing for one of the 25 available training places. Tailored courses are being offered to national human rights commissions, governments, NGOs, and other organisations, responding to the need for training and specific expertise in monitoring ESCR in national contexts. In addition to lectures given to different audiences in Switzerland and throughout the world, the coordinators of the ESCR Project also teach two courses on ESCR at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies for masters and graduate students of development, law, history, politics and economics. Publications and other resources The ESCR Project is involved in publishing reports and research documents, monographs and edited collections on ESC rights topics, such as: - The Fight for the Right to Food: Lessons Learned, co-authored by Jean Ziegler, Christophe Golay, Claire Mahon and Sally-Anne Way, Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming in 2010. - Legal Opinion on the Right to Property from a Human Rights’ Perspective, co-authored by Christophe Golay and Ioana Cismas, Rights & Democracy, 2010 (available in English and French) - “The Food Crisis and Food Security: Towards a New World Food Order?”, by Christophe Golay, 1 International Development Policy Series, 2010, pp. 215-232 (available in English and French on the publication’s website). - The Right to Food and Access to Justice: Examples at the National, Regional, and International Levels, Christophe Golay, FAO, Rome 2009 (available in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese on the FAO website). - Realizing the Right to Health, co-edited by Andrew Clapham, Mary Robinson, Claire Mahon and Scott Jerbi, Rüffer and Rub, Zurich, 2009 (more information and the order form are available at www.swisshumanrightsbook.ch). - “Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and the Right to Health” by Claire Mahon, in Realizing the Right to Health, Andrew Clapham, Mary Robinson, Claire Mahon and Scott Jerbi (eds), Rüffer & Rubb, Zurich, 2009. - “Progress at the Front: The draft Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights”, by Claire Mahon, 8 Human Rights Law Review 4, October 2008. - “Foreign Correspondent: Human Rights at the United Nations”, monthly column by Claire Mahon in Australian Human Rights Law Resource Centre Bulletin.
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