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INTRODUCTIONSocial policy is fundamental to the quest for socialjustice, women’s rights and gender equality.Defined broadly as a set of public interventionsthat affect the welfare and well-being of citizens, 1social policy is typically understood to cover issuessuch as income security, health, housing andeducation. It is therefore crucial to the reductionof poverty and inequality, the strengthening ofhuman capabilities and the realization of humanrights, the enjoyment of which has long beenenshrined in international human rights treaties(see Box 3.1).BOX 3.1Economic and social rights: Interlinked and indivisibleThe International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) clearly stipulates a seriesof economic and social rights, including:• The right to social security (article 9)• The right to an adequate standard of living, including adequate food, clothing and housing(article 11)• The right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health (article 12)• The right to education (article 13)In 2010, the United Nations General Assembly also recognized that safe and clean drinking water andsanitation was a human right ‘essential for the full enjoyment of life and all human rights’, 2 reinforcingan earlier clarification by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) that theright to water was part of the right to an adequate standard of living and the right to health. 3Although the above rights are separately codified, in practice their realization is highly interdependent.For example, realizing the right to health requires not only accessible and affordable health servicesbut also the availability of food, water and sanitation, clothing and housing; access to qualityeducation; and protection from risk and contingencies such as maternity, illness or work-relatedaccidents through adequate social security.States are obliged to ensure that women and men can equally enjoy these rights withoutdiscrimination (article 3). The CESCR has also clarified that the realization of these rights dependson the accessibility, affordability, acceptability and quality of related social services as well as on theadequacy of transfer payments such as pensions, family allowances or unemployment benefits.