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THE YALE JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW
[Vol. 33: 113
how all rights—civil, political, eco nomic, social, and cultural—contain
correlative duties of the stat e to both (“negatively”) refrain from and
(“positively” or affirmatively) perform certain acts in certain circumstances.
This analysis makes the equally si
gnificant point th at the “negative”
nonintervention duties are not, a priori, more important than the “positive.”222
Thus, “core obligations” are both nega tive and posit ive obligations and ar e
actively addressed to both judicial and other legal institutional settings.
This insight can explain the Comm ittee’s departure from its earlier
project to identify the minimum core obligation via a gradualist, consensusinformed starting point to its pr esent efforts to produce a template of “core
obligations” that straddl e different rights, duties of positive pr ovision, and
wider institutional strategies. The Comm ittee now uses the “core obligations”
list to outline the necessary steps of “operationalizing” rights and attempts to
circumvent the difficult questions of form and content of legal entitlement. In
some ways, this has introduced a mo re technical vocabulary around “core
obligations,” which seeks both to guide state action and to signal “vi olations”
under the Covenant. 223 Many commentators outside of the Committee have
seized on this formulat ion in order to settle
the institutionally derived
justiciability concerns for economic and social rights in both international and
national tribunals. Yet the shift of attention from the core content of each right
to core obligations raises a new se t of possibilities and challenges for the
workability of the minimum core idea.
A.
Supervising Core Obligations: From Typologies to Templates
The project of defini ng “core obligations” that now occupies the
Committee is one of ranking and delineating the multiple obligations that may
correlate with the realization of economic and social rights. It is a project that
rests on, but seeks to supersede, prev
ious analytical distinctions and
typologies, such as the distinction drawn between “conduct”-based obligations
and “result”-based obligations, and t he indexing of the dif ferent duties t o
respect, protect, and fulfill rights. 224 While the duty-holder, true to human
rights theory, is the state itself, such analytics help in dif ferentiating and
222. This is nevertheless contentious. See FABRE, supra note 90, at 47-49 (suggesting the
doctrine of acts and omissions intuits that, in most cases, negative duties are more important).
223. Audrey R. Chapman, A “Violations Approach” for Monitoring the International Covenant
on Economic, Social and Cultural R ights, 18 HUM. RTS. Q. 23 (1996) (proposing a more rigorous signal
of noncompliance for the failure to fulfill minimum core obligations).
224. The first typology set out for s ubsistence rights cam e from S HUE, supra note 78, at 52
(suggesting the duties to (1) avoid depriving, (2) protect from deprivation, and (3) aid the deprived). See
also Eide, Economic, Social and Cultural Rights as Human Rights , supra note 7, at 23-24 (presenting
typology of duties to respect, protect, and fulfill). Other duties have been proposed, su ch as the duty “to
promote” rights. See G.J.H. van Hoof, The Legal Nature of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: A
Rebuttal of Some Traditional Views , in THE RIGHT TO FOOD 97, 106-108 (Philip Alston & K atarina
Tomaševski eds., 1984). More specific, institutiona lly-oriented duties, such as the duty to “create
institutional machinery essential to [the] realiza tion of rights” and the dut y to “provide goods and
services to satisf y rights,” have also been suggested. H ENRY J. STEINER, PHILIP ALSTON & RYAN
GOODMAN, INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS IN CONTEXT: LAW, POLITICS, MORALS 187-89, 189 (3d ed.
2008). The typology of respect, pr otect, and fulfill has been adopt ed by the Comm ittee, although the
obligation to f ulfill is f urther delineated to inc lude obligations to f acilitate and pr ovide (the right to
food), General Comment No. 12, supra note 33, ¶ 15, and the obligation to promote (the right to health),
General Comment No. 14, supra note 10, ¶ 62.
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