Enforcement/Implementation of ESCR

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View the final report from the session on OP-ICESCR ratification organized as a part of the Social Rights Litigation Workshop held in South Africa on 12-14 March 2012.

In September 2011, the residents of Langaville Informal Settlement (comprised of more than one thousand and five hundred households and four thousand and six hundred residents) represented by the Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa (SERI), requested an order directing the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality to provide sufficient access to water and basic sanitation recognized in the Constitution of South Africa, through the Water Services Act, Regulation 3 of the Regulations Relating to Compulsory National Standards and Measures to Conserve Water (GN R509 in GG 22355 of 8 June

This High Court case was brought with the support of Hakijamii, a human rights organization based in Nairobi that has been a member of ESCR-Net since 2005; and stemmed from the request of more than 1,000 individuals, evicted from their homes located in six communities commonly known as the Medina Location of Garissa municipality.

The plaintiff filed an injunction aimed at guaranteeing the right of a 12 year-old girl to her mental health, among other rights. The girl became pregnant in early 2011 and started presenting symptoms of anxiety and depression, as diagnosed by different physicians, who recommended the interruption of her pregnancy.

ESCR-Net together with SERI, the NGO Coalition for the OP-ICESCR and the Norwegian Centre on Human Rights convened a three-day workshop in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Country: 
Brazil

ESCR-Net member WITNESS and the Habitat International Coalition (HIC) are working together to incorporate video advocacy into local and global campaigns on forced evictions across HIC's worldwide network in Brazil, Cambodia, Egypt, India and Mexico and will continue into other countries over the course of the 3-year partnership.

Alyne Pimentel, an Afro-Brazilian woman, died at 28 years old of complications resulting from her pregnancy, after a health center in Rio de Janeiro failed to provide for appropriate and timely access to emergency obstetric care. Pimentel's death could have been prevented, if the health center had correctly diagnosed and treated her for intrauterine fetal death. Pimentel's death is not an isolated case.