ENNHRI’s Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Working Group (ESCR WG) convened for its annual meeting in Belfast on 15 May 2018. The ESCR WG has been active since 2016, and is one of ENNHRI’s priorities for 2018-2021.

The Working Group Meeting was opened by the Chair of the ESCR WG, Laurence Bond, applauding the important work undertaken by the WG over the past year. “This is an important topic, and I wish for us to continue impact this area work – step by step”, Bond said.

“This is an important topic, and I wish for us to continue impact this area work – step by step”
Laurence Bond, ESCR WG Chair

Nicola Browne, the Policy Director of Participation and Practice of Rights (PPR), was invited to the meeting to share her experience from PPR’s case study on social housing in Northern Belfast. The presentation was followed by a session of sharing of good practices by Alison Hosie from the Scottish Human Rights Commission (SHRC). She presented the conclusions from SHRC’s project on human rights budget analysis under the NHRI.EU Blended Learning Course.

The members continued to discuss and identify follow-up actions of the coming ENNHRI report on poverty measurement and SDGs. This report will be made public in June. In the afternoon, the members of the ESCR WG participated in the first joint ESR and OPRE (Operational Platform of Roma Equality) Platform meeting, which focused on the rights to housing. The joint meeting was followed up by separate Collaborative Platforms meetings on May 16.

Collaborative Platform

The Collaborative Platform is a collaboration between the Council of Europe (CoE), the European Union Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA), the European Network of Equality Bodies (EQUINET) and ENNHRI. Debbie Kohner (Secretary General) and Siri Berge Engerud (Junior Programmes Officer) represented ENNHRI Secretariat at the ESCR WG and joint Platform meeting.

For further details, please contact Nina Panikova.

Photo: The first joint ESR and OPRE Platform meeting