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Improving human rights is the goal of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and now there’s a toolkit to help make the covenant more useful and powerful. A global coalition of NGOs has put together a Toolkit for Action to promote the covenant’s Optional Protocol, which allows citizens who are denied rights in their home countries to pursue justice at the international level via the United Nations. The protocol, which was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2008, has been signed by more than 30 countries.

The Toolkit for Action aims to empower citizens to get their government to commit to the protocol. This toolkit consists of four booklets, each covering a different topic: 

• The contents of the original covenant
• An overview of the protocol
• Reasons that states should adopt the protocol
• Tools to lobby your country for ratification and implementation.

The International Network for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESCR-Net) created the toolkit, and the booklets can be downloaded on the toolkit web page. (Spanish, French, and Arabic versions will be available shortly.) As advocates strive to ensure that members of the global community have the right to adequate housing, food, water, sanitation, health, work, and education, the protocol serves as another means to bring justice to more of the world.