The Human Rights Council, in its resolution 11/1, established an open-ended working group of the Human Rights Council to explore the possibility of an optional protocol to CROC that provided a communications procedure. At its first meeting on 6 December 2010, the working group elected Drahoslav Sntefánek (Slovakia) as Chairperson-Rapporteur.
4.
Report of the Open-ended Working Group on an Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child to provide a communications procedure, UN Doc A/HRC/17/36, 25 May 2011.
5.
Ibid, at [40].
6.
Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment No 12 (2009), The Right of the Child to be Heard, UN Doc CRC/C/GC/12, 20 July 2009, [1]-[3].
7.
Ibid [12].
8.
Ibid [25].
9.
Ibid [21].
10.
Above n 3, at [51].
11.
Joint NGO Submission to the Open-Ended Working Group on an Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child to provide a communications procedure, October 2010, [11].
12.
See, eg, Human Rights Committee, Communication No 869/1999 and also Human Rights Committee, General Comment No 33 on 'The Obligations of States Parties under the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, UN Doc CCPR/C/GC/33, 5 November 2008, [19].
In Republic of South Africa v Grootboom (2001) (1) SA 46, the seminal South African ESC rights case, Justice Yacoob concluded that it was not ‘necessary to decide whether it is appropriate for a court in the first instance to determine the minimum core of a right’ (at [33]).
17.
For more extensive analysis of the minimum core, and a caution against it, see YoungKatharine, ‘The Minimum Core of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights’ (2008) 33Yale Journal of International Law113–177. For a pragmatic exploration of the minimum core in the context of health care, see BilchitzDavid, ‘The Right to Health Care Services and the Minimum Core: Disentangling the Principled and Pragmatic Strands’ (2006) 7ESC Review, 7–10.
18.
The South African cases of Minister of Health v Treatment Action Campaign (2002) 5 SA 721 (CC) and Mazibuko v City of Johannesburg [2009] ZACC 28 (8 October 2009) illustrate this approach in practice. In both cases, the court signed off on plans to remedy ESC rights violations where the plans were designed not by the court but by the parties themselves.
19.
See ZeffertHenrietta, ‘Time to Expand the ACT Human Rights Act 2004? Report of the Australian Capital Territory Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Research Project’ (2011) 17(2) Australian Journal of Human Rights215, 232–4.
20.
OP ICCPR Rules of Procedure 101 and 103, in UN Doc A/45/40, vol 11, Annex XI.
See SchmidtMarcus, ‘Follow-up Mechanisms Before UN Human Rights Treaty Bodies and the UN mechanism beyond’, in BayefskyAnne F (ed), UN Human Rights Treaty System in the 21st Century (Kluwer Law International, 2000) 236.
23.
TurkelliGamze Erdem and VandenholeWouter, ‘The Convention on the Rights of the Child: Repertoires of NGO participation’ (2012) 12(1) Human Rights Law Review33, 43–45.
MarcusDavid, ‘The Normative Development of Socioeconomic Rights through Supranational Adjudication’ (2006) 42Stanford Journal of International Law53, 55.
