The human rights issue The human rights argument General Comment 18 (GC 18) of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights details the Committee’s understanding of the right to work. GC 18 says that the right to work means: • Availability. States parties must have services designed to assist and support individuals to enable them to identify and find available employment; • Accessibility. This includes a guarantee that access to work will be provided on a non-discriminatory basis. It also means that people have the right to seek and obtain information on the means of gaining access to employment; These • Acceptability and Quality. two guarantees relate to working conditions, the right to form trade unions and to freely accept work. Despite the fact that the Indian economy has been growing rapidly in recent The General Comment also says that States that are unwilling to use the maximum of their available resources for the realization of the right to work are in violation of their obligations under article 6 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, guaranteeing the right to work. years, large sectors of the population still suffer from extreme poverty. Millions of people’s right to work is not being realized. When people lack work, they cannot secure the resources necessary to provide essential food, housing, education, health care and other necessary goods and services for themselves and their families. The Government of India has enacted the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, which, if properly implemented, would make a significant contribution to realizing people’s right to work. However, the Indian civil society organization (CSO), Samarthan, has documented numerous problems with implementation of the Scheme, including substantial under-spending of allocated funds, which has resulted in the Scheme’s falling far short of its promise of realizing the right to work. Where a government is failing to fully spend funds allocated for ESC rightsrelated areas, it is failing to use the maximum of its available resources to realize these rights.