Digest of Developments on Social Rights (Winter 2019 - 2020)

Developments in Courts and News

1. Human Rights Watch submitted a review to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights’ in respect of France on its treatment of unaccompanied migrant children and its protection of students, teachers, and schools during armed conflict under the ICESCR.

2. A Dutch court ordered the immediate halt of an automated surveillance system for detecting welfare fraud because it violates human rights

3. The Supreme Court of the United States ruled that it would not reconsider a decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals saying that enforcement of Boise’s ordinances constituted cruel and unusual punishment when “there is a greater number of homeless individuals in [the jurisdiction] than the number of available beds [in shelters].”

4. The High Court of Kenya halted a controversial biometric ID scheme until new data protection laws are enacted.

New Scholarship

1. Alexandre de le Court, Sufficiency principle and minimum social security benefits: an analysis from the perspective of the German right to a minimum of subsistence 32(2) Rev. derecho (Valdivia) (2019) (analyzing the recent case concerning social minimum in Germany from a comparative perspective).

2. Renu Ghimire, Right to Housing as a Fundamental Right in Post-Earthquake Nepal: The Interplay of Municipal and International Law 3 Nat. Jud. Acad. L.J. 205 (2019) (describing the heightened need for protection and interaction between domestic and international law in emergent situations in South Asia).

3. Toomas Kotkas, Ingrid Leijten, Frans Pennings (eds.), Specifying and Securing a Social Minimum in the Battle Against Poverty (2019) (bringing together a wide variety of perspectives on the legal and academic dimensions of a social minimum and its expression in law and policy across jurisdictions).

4. Juan Carlos Benito Sánchez, Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Decisions on the Right to Housing in Spain (2017–2018), in Ben Djazia et al., Forced Evictions and Judicial Developments Michel Vols, and Christoph U. Schmid (eds.), Houses, Homes and the Law. Studies in Housing Law (The Hague: Eleven International Publishing, 2019) (putting together CESCR committee decisions on forced evictions).

5. Jessie M. Hohmann, The Elements of Adequate Housing: Grenfell as Violation 5(2) Queen Mary Human Rights Law Review 1 (2019) (considering the Grenfell Tower fire as a breach of the right to housing by the UK, in contravention of its obligations under international law).

6. Conor Casey, Courts, Public Interest Litigation, and Homelessness: A Commentary on Recent Case Law Dublin University Law Journal (2019) (Forthcoming) (providing a summary of jurisprudence emerging from the High Court of Ireland).

7. Jootaek Lee, The Human Right to Education: Definition, Research and Annotated Bibliography 34(3) Emory International Law Review (2019).

 Announcements and Events

1. The Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, will host a one-week intensive short course on judicial enforcement of socio-economic rights in Africa from 18 to 22 May 2020. Apply online here. 

2. The 16th Economic and Social Rights Academic Network: UK & Ireland (ESRAN-UKI) workshop will be held at the University of Liverpool, School of Law and Social Justice on Friday 20 March 2020. Abstracts due by 21 February. 

3. The Law and Development Institute and Bucerius Law School will co-host the 2020 Law and Development Conference on “Law and Development in High-Income Countries” in Hamburg, Germany on November 6, 2020.

4. The Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, will host a one-week intensive short course on judicial enforcement of socio-economic rights in Africa on 18-23 May 2020.

5. The University of Nottingham Human Rights Law Centre and Doughty Street Chambers will be co-hosting a one-day training course entitled “Social Rights in Europe: Advocacy and Litigation” on Tuesday 10th March 2020.