Claiming a Fundamental Right to Basic Necessities of Life: Problems and Prospects of Adjudication in Bangladesh

Chowdhury, M Jashim Ali

Abstract

The debate on whether socio-economic rights can or should be adjudicated upon and enforced by courts is ongoing since the 1960s, when the rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) were separated into two covenants. Though the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) 1966 and the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) 1966 differ from each other in many respects, the key point which makes the ICESCR drastically weaker than and subservient to the ICCPR1 is Article 2(1), which stipulates that State parties are required to work towards the progressive realization of socio-economic rights subject to the availability of resources. On the other hand, Article 2 of the ICCPR imposes an immediate and justiciable obligation upon the State.

Since civil political rights figured prominently in the west while socioeconomic rights were propagated by the socialist block, ideological cleavages between socialism and capitalism shadowed the necessity of integration of socio-economic rights among justiciable fundamental rights and they were thereby avoided practically.2 After the World War II most of the third world countries emerging free from capitalist colonial legacy adopted this formula of segregating the human rights and hence socio-economic rights remained the poor cousins of their civil and political counterparts. In the sub-continent, Indian (1950) and Pakistani (1973) constitutions adopted this model and later so did the Constitution of Bangladesh in 1972.

Citation

Chowdhury, M. J. A. (2012). Claiming a Fundamental Right to Basic Necessities of Life: Problems and Prospects of Adjudication in Bangladesh. Indian Journal of Constitutional Law, 5, 184-208

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: Sep 30, 2012
• Publication Date: Sep 30, 2012
• Deposit Date: Oct 31, 2022
• Journal: Indian Journal of Constitutional Law
• Print ISSN: 0975-0134
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 5
• Article Number: 7
• Pages: 184-208
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/4109773
• Publisher URL: https://ijcl.nalsar.ac.in/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/5IndianJConstL184.pdf