FOREWORD The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: A Study on Bangladesh Compliance Study Conducted by: S M Zakir Hossain, Advocate Published: December, 2012 Published by: National Human Rights Commission, Bangladesh Gulpheshan Plaza (Level-11) 8, Shahid Sangbadik Salina Parvin Sarak Boro Magbazar, Dhaka-1217, Bangladesh Phone: +880-2-9336863, Fax- +880-2-8333219 Email: nhrc.bd@gmail.com, Web: www.nhrc.org.bd Disclaimer: The study data, opinions and recommendations contained in this report are those of the author. They do not necessarily represent or reflect the views or opinions of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) or UNDP, Sweden, DANIDA and the Swiss Confederation. Human rights as a concept are normative in essence, capturing a bundle of rights reflecting the interests most fundamental to any human being. It is not without reason that the understanding of human rights has become a critical component of modern legal systems. Human rights have experienced momentous growth during the post-World war II era. At the international, state and local levels, human rights laws, declarations, charters, and covenants have multiplied and endorsed a recurring core of rights and obligations linked to the protection of fundamental human dignity, equality and justice. Nevertheless, there has been a growing concern that simply ratifying or legislating human rights conventions and laws does not lead to the effective enjoyment of human rights in the daily lives of millions of individuals. What really is necessary are initiatives that would translate these broad and abstract human rights norms and standards into the vernacular of everyday life, transplanting these norms into ordinary human relations where they can truly achieve their transformative potential. Human rights, in the way they have been classically captured in legal standards, protect the individual against oppression by the state. Built on the painful experiences of abuses at the hands of governments, human rights thus correspond to a series of obligations imposed upon the state, including either duties to abstain from interfering within a protected zone shielding every individual, or duties to provide everyone with the opportunity to develop and realize their full potential. Human rights have transformed the way in which we conceive of the place of the individual within the community and in relation to the state in a vast array of disciplines, including law, politics, philosophy, sociology and geography. The published output on human rights over the last five decades has been enormous, but on the whole bound tightly to a notion of human rights that links individuals and groups directly to the state. However, over the last two decades, there has been a gradual enlargement of the scope of human rights, moving them beyond claims against the state to contest human rights violations by non-state actors. Initially spurred by feminist critiques of the exclusion of domestic violence as a