Collective Work

Members intervene in pair of groundbreaking climate change-related human rights cases pending at the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights

Collectives of ESCR-Net members have filed third-party interventions in a pair of groundbreaking climate change-related human rights cases now pending before the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights. The two cases—Duarte Agostinho v. Portugal and 32 Other States, and ...

ESCR-Net submits amicus in case concerning decades-long struggle to remedy housing rights violation in South Africa

ESCR-Net has intervened as amicus in the Thubakgale case before the High Court in South Africa, a decades-long case litigated by the Socio-Economic Rights Initiative in...

Network members participate in workshop on community-led litigation on women’s land, housing, and natural resource rights

This past November, members of the Women and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (WESCR) Working Group and the Strategic Litigation Working Group (SLWG) gathered for a workshop co-hosted with Hakijamii to...

Civil society groups submit report on COVID impacts to the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities

In April 2022, the Disability Rights Initiative of the Human Rights Law Network, the...

Equality (sign) by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Alpha Stock Images

Press Release: UN Committee Decries Racial Discrimination in Global COVID-19 Vaccine Access

In a historic statement released this week, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD or Committee) starkly warned that “only 15.21% of the population of low-income countries has received even one vaccine dose, creating a pattern of unequal distribution within and between countries that replicates slavery and colonial-era racial hierarchies.” As the Committee notes, under the International Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, States are obligated to eliminate all forms of racial inequities, be they by purpose or effect.

Opinion: Vaccine inequity deepens structural racial discrimination

Over five decades ago, the first codified global human rights instrument on racial injustice, the International Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. As we celebrated the 56th anniversary of the ICERD a few months ago, it is disheartening that two years since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, inequalities in vaccine and healthcare access continue to deepen along racial and intersectional lines.

Six Reasons Why a Trips Waiver Is Needed to Justly and Effectively End the Covid-19 Pandemic

Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) are international agreements for the protection of intellectual property monopolies (including patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets etc.) monitored by the World Trade Organization (WTO). TRIPS obligates member states to...

ESCR-Net Members And Allies Demand WTO Stop Trading With Our Lives

Nearly 200 ESCR-Net members and allies joined together to amplify the voices of our communities who have been most affected by the inequalities exacerbated by the WTO’s refusal to pass a comprehensive waiver on the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement on COVID-19 vaccines and therapies.

Human rights advocates eye legal action against Canadian, German, Norwegian and UK governments over global COVID vaccine inequality

Human rights lawyers have threatened legal action against the German, Norwegian, and Canadian governments today for obstructing global efforts to increase access to COVID-19 vaccines and other healthcare technologies.

The move comes as state delegates from around the...

Press Advisory: Online Global Rally - WTO: TRIPS Waiver for COVID-19 Vaccines Now!

ESCR-Net, Movement Law Lab, and The People’s Vaccine Alliance and Médecins sans frontières /Doctors Without Borders co-sponsor the Online Global Rally to put pressure on the World Trade Organization (WTO) and States who refuse to pass a meaningful vaccine waiver on life-saving COVID-19 vaccines and therapies.

Press Release: Campaigners petition UN to investigate racial and gender discrimination in global COVID-19 vaccine roll-out

An international coalition of human rights law groups, public health experts, and civil society organisations is taking legal action against the US, UK, Germany, Norway, and Switzerland, on the grounds that these countries are in violation of international human rights law by failing to intervene on what has been an inequitable and racially discriminatory rollout of the vaccine and other COVID healthcare technologies.

Press Release: UN Experts Raise Urgent Questions and Concerns to Pharmaceuticals, States and WTO on COVID-19 Vaccines Inequalities

Over 280 organizations and social movements united in ESCR-Net - International Network for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESCR-Net), demand urgent answers from the World Trade Organization (WTO), States and pharmaceutical companies to the letters sent by the UN experts raising urgent questions about the measures they will undertake to facilitate universal and equitable access to vaccines. According to the World Health Organization, about 75% of the 5 billion vaccines already administered have been concentrated in just 10 countries, amid a mounting global pandemic death toll.