three‐pillar structure, with each category of the State's obligations calling for specific types of
reasoning and relying on different legal techniques:
Obligation to respect
Obligation to protect
Obligation to fulfil
Obligation not to interfere with Obligation to intervene in order Obligation to take proactive
existing levels of enjoyment
to control the conduct of non‐ steps to move towards the full
State actors
realization of the right
Non‐discrimination
The establishment in 1986 of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights provided a
further impetus to these efforts aimed at clarifying the normative content of the rights listed in the
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Ten years after the Covenant
entered into force, the Economic and Social Council had finally decided to create a body of eighteen
independent experts, modeled on the Human Rights Committee, after it came to realize that it would
be unable to monitor the implementation of the Covenant on its own. The newly established
Committee was facing the considerable challenge of having to clarify the content of the Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The expectations were high, and there were very few
precedents it could build upon (Alston 1987).
An expert meeting organized in Maastricht in 1986 provided the opportunity to further advance the
understanding of the legal significance of economic, social and cultural rights, beyond the right to
food on which most efforts had been converging until then. The timing was propitious: it was held
after the members of the Committee had been appointed (and four of them were present in
Maastricht), but before they held their first session, and at a time when, although the significance of
the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights was clearly recognized, it listed rights that were
still largely underexplored by human rights scholars and underenforced by courts.
The Limburg Principles that were adopted at the Maastricht meeting marked an important advance
in the understanding of economic, social and cultural rights (Dankwa and Flinterman 1988), and their
influence further increased after they were officially transmitted to the Commission on Human
Rights at the request of the Netherlands (see UN document E/CN.4/1987/17). But only ten years
later, when another expert meeting convened in Maastricht between 22 and 26 January 1997, was
the tripartite framework of States' obligations taken as a departure point. In contrast to the Limburg
Principles, which provided a set of examples of how economic and social rights could be violated, and
qualified all the obligations imposed on States by a reference to a reasonableness criterion (see
paragraph 71), the document adopted at that second meeting, the Maastricht Guidelines on
Violations of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (later reissued as UN document E/C.12/2000/13),
offered guidance across the full range of rights listed in the��Covenant (see Chapter 2 in this volume).
The Maastricht Principles stated in paragraph 6 :
Like civil and political rights, economic, social and cultural rights impose three different types
of obligations on States: the obligations to respect, protect and fulfil. Failure to perform any
one of these three obligations constitutes a violation of such rights. The obligation to respect
requires States to refrain from interfering with the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural
rights. Thus, the right to housing is violated if the State engages in arbitrary forced evictions.
The obligation to protect requires States to prevent violations of such rights by third parties.
Thus, the failure to ensure that private employers comply with basic labour standards may
amount to a violation of the right to work or the right to just and favourable conditions of
work. The obligation to fulfil requires States to take appropriate legislative, administrative,
budgetary, judicial and other measures towards the full realization of such rights. Thus, the
failure of States to provide essential primary health care to those in need may amount to a
violation.
6
CRIDHO‐WP‐2013/2: O. De Schutter – Economic,Social and Cultural Rights as Human Rights: An Introduction