Chapter 2 | Page 73 mothers. Similarly, children and young persons are accorded special protection, which requires States to put in place special measures of protection and assistance, without discrimination, and to ensure that social exploitation of children and young persons is prohibited and punishable by law.136 The right to an adequate standard of living and its correlative obligations under Article 11 covers adequate food, clothing and housing, and continuous improvement of living conditions. The overarching concept of the right to an adequate standard of living is the ability of everyone to be able, ‘without shame and without reasonable obstacles, to be a full participant in ordinary, everyday interaction with other people’.137 Similarly, this right also constitutes individuals’ ability to ‘enjoy their basic needs under conditions of dignity’.138 In essence, an adequate standard of living implies a ‘living above the poverty line of the society concerned’.139 This would include the right to adequate food, which is inseparable from social justice and ‘indivisibly linked to the inherent dignity of the human person and is indispensable for the fulfilment of other human rights’, which obligates States to adopt appropriate economic, environmental and social policies oriented towards poverty eradication and fulfilment of all human rights.140 Similarly, the adequacy of the right to water depends on factors necessary to prevent death from dehydration, and adequate amounts for consumption, cooking and other basic personal requirements.141 It is generally understood that priority in the allocation of 136 ICESCR, above n 33, art 10. 137 Asbjørn Eide, 'The Right to an Adequate Standard of Living including the Right to Food' in Asbjørn Eide, Catarina Krause and Allan Rosas (eds), Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: A Textbook (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht, 2001) 133-148. 138 Ibid. 139 Ibid., 134. 140 Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, General Comment No 12: The Right to Adequate Food (art. 11), 20th sess, UN Doc E/C.12/1999/5 (12 May 1999), [4]. 141 While the ICESCR does not include an explicit reference to a right to water, the ESCR Committee in its General Comment 15 has interpreted the provisions of the Covenant Articles 11 and 12 (right to an adequate standard of living and the right to the highest attainable standard of health) to imply such a right. Although this interpretation was somewhat controversial at the time, the right to water is also recognised by other international instruments as well as by the United Nations General Assembly on the 28 July 2010 (Resolution 64/292: The human right to water and sanitation).