International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, First Optional Protocol, Second

A man in Mumbai is held for weeks without being told why. A newspaper editor is threatened for a headline. A family is evicted with nowhere to go and no school for the children. Are these only Indian law problems, or does the world have a common yardstick? In 1966 the United Nations turned the promises of the 1948 Universal Declaration into two binding treaties, the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. This topic explains what each treaty promises, how it is policed through its Optional Protocols, and how India's own statute borrows from them.

In two minutes

The ICCPR and the ICESCR, both adopted by the UN General Assembly on 16 December 1966, turned the Universal Declaration into binding treaty obligations; the ICCPR demands immediate respect for civil and political rights and is backed by two Optional Protocols, while the ICESCR asks for progressive realisation of economic, social and cultural rights.

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