Defending Dignity A Manual for National Human Rights Institutions on Monitoring Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Obligation to fulfil This obligation requires States to take appropriate legislative, administrative, budgetary, judicial and other measures towards the full realization of ESCR. Elements of this obligation include duties to: • Facilitate: take measures to facilitate access to and use of goods and services • Promote: inform people of their rights and how to claim them • Provide: provide goods and services to people when, for reasons beyond their control, they are unable to obtain them. The remainder of this chapter examines in more detail the obligation to fulfil. A clear understanding of the concepts that underpin the obligation to fulfil is important because, as discussed further in Chapter 3, these concepts establish the criteria for analysing socio-economic policies and development plans. The elements of the obligation to fulfil are summarized in the following table. ELEMENTS OF THE OBLIGATION TO FULFILL • Duty to take steps: to adopt legislative, judicial, budgetary, administrative and other measures to fulfil ESCR. • Maximum available resources: must be provided to the steps taken to fulfil rights, including both resources that can be mobilized domestically and those that can be provided through international cooperation. • Minimum core obligations: an immediate duty to prioritize achieving minimum essential levels of rights enjoyment universally. • Non-discrimination: an immediate duty to end unjustified differential treatment in law and in steps taken to fulfil rights and ensure substantive equality in the enjoyment of rights as speedily as possible. • Duty to ensure that relevant services needed to fulfil rights are available, accessible, acceptable and of adequate quality (AAAAQ), without discrimination. • Progressive realization: duty to move swiftly towards increased levels of rights enjoyment, with no deliberate retrogression. 2.4.2. Obligations of conduct and obligations of result The various elements of all obligations – to respect, protect and fulfil – can be broadly categorized as being either “obligations of conduct” or “obligations of result”. Obligations of conduct relate to the actions that the State is expected to take. To meet its obligation to fulfil, the State is expected to take action “reasonably calculated to realize” the enjoyment of a particular right.4 For example, the adoption and implementation of a plan of action to reduce maternal mortality is a type of action that can be taken to fulfil the right to health. Obligations of result relate to the outcomes that the State is expected to achieve, usually to decrease the rates of deprivation of a right or to increase the enjoyment of it. Taking again the right to health as an example, the State would be expected to prioritize the achievement of minimum essential levels of enjoyment of the right to health universally in order to meet its obligation to fulfil. The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has held that this includes access to sexual and reproductive health services. The specific target (3.7) aiming for universal access sexual and reproductive health-care services included in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 is an example of a time-bound commitment that reflects this core human rights obligation. 4 22 International Commission of Jurists (1997), Maastricht Guidelines on Violations of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Adopted in Maastricht, January 26, 1997, at para.7.