The Missing Mechanism: The Optional Protocol to the ICESCR
For 42 years, the ICESCR had no individual complaints mechanism. The Optional Protocol, which entered into force in 2013, changed that — creating pathways for individual and group complaints, an inquiry procedure for grave violations, and inter-state communications. The U.S. has not signed it. Understanding what it adds clarifies what ICESCR ratification without the Optional Protocol would still accomplish, and what it would still leave unfinished.