Geneva, 7 February
Submission to the Open-Ended Working Group Regarding the Communications Procedure (Reservation)
The NGO Coalition considers that to uphold the integrity of the procedures to be established under the OP-ICESCR no reservations should be allowed.
The raison d’être of an Optional Protocol is to provide to victims of ESC rights violations an international procedure to obtain protection and redress. As a tool to both complement and strengthen the Covenant, as well as the realisation of ESC rights, State Party reservations to an Optional Protocol would undermine such potential, as well as the purpose of an OP-ICESCR.
An Optional Protocol is a procedural instrument that would neither introduce new nor expand present ESC rights obligations that States Parties accepted through their ratification of the Covenant. An Optional Protocol would thus merely serve as a means through which States Parties would be encouraged to realise existing Covenant obligations. In addition, the Optional Protocol would by its very nature be optional, and, as such, reservations that curtailed its applicability would be unnecessary.
Accepting reservations to the Optional Protocol to the ICESCR would depart from existing practice where neither the OP-CEDAW, the OP1-ICCPR, nor the OP-CAT accept reservations.
