Gilles Giacca, Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights in Armed Conflict

In its 2004 Palestinian Wall advisory opinion, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) concluded that a state’s obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) are not suspended simply by the existence of an armed conflict. 1 Instead, the obligations are defined in light of international humanitarian law (IHL) and are extended to those who are under the state’s jurisdiction through occupation. 2 Invoking only the doctrine of lex specialis , 3 the Court largely remained silent on the relationship between the laws of armed conflict and the economic, social and cultural rights (ESC rights) treaty. Giacca’s ambitious piece begins to address the practicalities raised by the Court’s opinion. In doing so, he set himself the unenviable task of having to tackle a range of long discussed but still disputed issues, from the definition of ‘progressive realization’ and the content of ‘minimum core obligations’ under the ICESCR to the human rights responsibilities of non-state actors in armed conflict.

Advisory opinion · Covenant · Cultural rights · Doctrine · Human rights · International court · International human rights law · International law · Jurisdiction · Political science · Public international law · Sociology · State (computer science) · Treaty · Global Peace and Security Dynamics · International Law and Human Rights · Law