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Priority, agency and cooperation: how international human rights law helps fulfil the economic and social rights of the most vulnerable

ABSTRACT Even the progressive realisation of economic and social rights, prescribed in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, is challenging for most states. The reality of most vulnerable groups, faced with multiple layers of vulnerability (such as socio-economic condition, geographical location, age or gender), remains bleak. This article explores how critical the concept of ‘the most vulnerable’ is, particularly in the context of social and economic rights, in which the concept generates further positive obligations for states. Drawing on various sources of international human rights law and on some concepts stemming from a vulnerability approach to human rights, this analysis demonstrates how states can address the needs of the most vulnerable, in three ways: by giving priority to those groups, by compelling states to fulfil their rights with due consideration to agency and participation, and by committing all actors to combine efforts, including foreign states through international cooperation. I conclude that this three-pronged approach to the fulfilment of economic and social rights of the most vulnerable also relies on the construction of a social order that tackles extreme vulnerability, at the particular and at the universal levels, and addresses substantive inequality.