Caselaw Database - All Cases

ESCR-Net Caselaw Database: A database on domestic, regional and international decisions regarding Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

The parties in this divorce action are Mr. Chen and Ms. Wang, a couple who married in 2015 and then separated in 2018. The couple has one son together. Mr. Chen filed this divorce action in October 2020, requesting that the court declare the couple divorced and divide their property.

Fátima El Ayoubi and Mohamed El Azouan Azouz (the authors) presented this communication to the Committee on their behalf and on behalf of their young son, Haron El Azouan El Ayoubi, claiming that Spain violated their right to adequate housing under Article 11(1) of the ICESCR by seeking and upholding their eviction when they did not have alternative accommodation. 

In 2010, expectant mothers Millicent Awuor Omuya and Margaret Anyoso Oliele planned to deliver their children in clinics with affordable maternity fees. However, due to possible complications, both women were transferred to Pumwani Maternity Hospital, East Africa’s largest referral maternity hospital. In Ms. Awuor’s case, even though the complications did not materialize, she was still charged 3,600 Kenya Shillings (Kshs). She unsuccessfully sought assistance with these fees from a hospital social worker and the hospital matron.

Soon after oleum gas leaked from a plant owned by Shriram Foods and Fertiliser Industries (“Shriram”), a district magistrate ordered Shriram to temporarily cease operating a chlorine plant within the company’s 76-acre complex located in a densely populated area of around 200,000 people in Delhi. Petitioner, M.C.

Manuela, a 33-year old woman and mother of two experiencing poverty in rural El Salvador, was charged with aggravated homicide after an obstetric emergency resulting in her pregnancy loss. When Manuela’s father took her to the hospital to address her medical emergency, medical personnel interrogated her for three hours upon arrival, delaying treatment.

On May 26, 2017, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (the Court) issued the historic judgment that the Kenyan government (the State) had violated seven articles of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (the Charter) by evicting the indigenous Ogiek people from their ancestral land in the Mau Forest. That decision ordered the government to take all appropriate measures to remedy the violations, and stipulated that the issue of reparations would be decided separately.

The United Kingdom’s Advertising Standards Authority concluded that the airline’s claims that customers choosing Ryanair over another carrier would have lowered personal carbon dioxide emissions were misleading and in violation of the UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising. The ASA found consumers would find insufficient information in the advertisements to substantiate the company’s claims and further notes that well-known competitors were absent from the calculation used by Ryanair. 

Ashghar Leghari, a farmer and lawyer, sued the Pakistani government for inaction vis-a-vis climate change, claiming that this inaction, “delay, and lack of seriousness” violated the fundamental rights of life provided by the Constitution, since climate change posed a serious threat to water, food, and energy security in Pakistan. Further, Leghari argued the “effects of climate change can be addressed through mitigation and adaptation.” 

Luisa Neubauer along with other nine youth climate activists brought a case against the German federal government for its failure to enact adequate climate legislation in the country. The plaintiffs argued that the existing climate legislation– the 2019 German Federal Climate Change Act (Bundes-Klimaschutzgesetz– hereinafter KSG)– not only violated Germany’s responsibilities under the Paris Agreement, but also violated their fundamental rights enshrined in the German constitution (German Basic Law). 

In 2022, the Philippines Human Rights Commission (hereinafter “the Commission”) released the results of a seven-year investigation into the impacts of climate change on the Philippines and the duty on states and private actors to address “the increasing frequency and severity of natural disasters.” The investigation was prompted after Greenpeace Southeast Asia and others submitted a petition to the Commission, asking it to examine the impacts of climate change through the lens of human rights violations, the role of major fossil fuel companies, and the role of states in aiding those “carbon