A/69/274 the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights , the State is obliged to take steps, through international assistance and cooperation, to the maximum of its available resources, with a view to achieving progressively the full realization of the right by all appropriate means, including particularly the adoption of legislative measures. Historically, however, the obligation of States to take steps or positive measures to realize the right to adequate housing has not received as much attention in the development of legal norms as other aspects of States ’ obligations. Legal norms have focused more often on State action that interferes with the right to adequate housing. As a result, at the international level there is more clarity about legal norms applied to forced evictions and comparatively les s about the positive obligation to address homelessness or to allocate the resources necessary to ensure access to housing for marginalized groups. Similarly, domestic courts tend to deal with more cases and develop more jurisprudence on evictions and service disconnections than on failures to prioritize the development of services for informal settlements. 30. There are, of course, particular challenges for international human rights bodies and domestic courts in developing precise requirements for compliance with the obligation of the progressive realization of the right to adequate housing. Obligations of this sort must be assessed in relation to contextual, legal and historical factors such as available resources, competing needs, economic policy and international assistance. There is no simple formula for defining the precise legislative measures that are required or for ascertaining the necessary budgetary allocations. However, the fact that compliance with these aspects of the right to adequate housing can be assessed only in the context of particular circumstances should not lead to a lack of human rights accountability or to the ignoring of violations. 31. The nature of State obligations in different circumstances must be clarified through procedures and mechanisms through which obligations can be assessed in context. Just as legal norms governing security of tenure and evictions are clarified through adjudication in particular circumstances, so too the obligations linked to progressive realization, such as maximum available resources and appropriate legislative measures, must be fleshed out by human rights bodies and courts to clarify their meaning in particular circumstances. 32. One of the most significant advances in both domestic and international law in recent years has been the recognition that all aspects of the right to adequate housing and other economic and social rights are justiciable. 11 Debates about the justiciability of economic, social and cultural rights, in particular the obligation of progressive realization, are now, thankfully, behind us. Domestic courts and regional bodies have demonstrated that all components of economic and social rights can be competently adjudicated. Accordingly, a comprehensive approach to access to justice was affirmed in the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, adopted by the General Assembly on the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 12 The __________________ 11 12 14-58890 See General Assembly resolution 63/117. See Catarina de Albuquerque, “Chronicle of an announced birth: The coming into life of the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights — The missing piece of the International Bill of Human Rights”, in Human Rights Quarterly, vol. 32, No. 1 (2010); see also Bruce Porter, “The reasonableness of article 8 (4) — Adjudicating claims from the margins”, in Nordic Journal of Human Rights, vol. 27, No. 1 (2009). 9/20