Ben Saul, The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: Travaux Préparatoires

Abstract

The chapter reviews Ben Saul’s book The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: Travaux Préparatoires. In his book, Saul presents a huge corpus of important materials on the ICESCR’s genesis. For the first time, he includes and makes available detailed documents of the drafting procedure and history of the ICESCR. The main part of the book chronologically systematizes the Travaux Préparatoires in two volumes. The collection contains, among others, also an introduction by the author, which provides important background information on the drafting of the Covenant. In particular, he highlights the origins of economic, social and cultural rights, offers a summary of the debate on their codification on the international level, contextualizes the drafting procedure, and draws attention to the existing international documents and drafts addressing economic and social rights.