ICON S Conference 17 – 19 June 2016 Humboldt University Berlin

policy and legal framework around disability on paper
book, the ground reality is far from satisfactory.
This becomes challenging due to the vicious circle of
disability and poverty, lack of enabling environment
& lack of equal opportunities & absence of support
mechanism, to realize the rights available on statute
book. This paper will discuss recent trends in India
where judicial activism as a tool helped realize several
rights for persons with disabilities in India. Some
important among them are right of deaf persons to
legally drive and seek driving licenses, non-discrimination
in insurance sector equal opportunities in
employment and realizing equality through the tool
of positive discrimination (reservation in jobs) for persons
with disabilities.
Vanice Regina Lírio do Valle: Enforcing Socioeconomic
Rights Through Immediate Efficacy:
A Case Study of Rio De Janeiro’s Right To Housing
Human rights enforcement through the Judiciary is
a widespread option, translated into different constitutional
clauses. Many alternatives have been explored to
combine the urge in turning those moral commitments
into reality without losing the authority legal clauses
should have. The Brazilian experience, despite the
formal allusion to immediate application, was turned
through interpretation into the assertion of immediate
efficacy. Adding efficacy as a constitutional feature of the
human rights system does not enhance enforcement –
in fact, it contributes to increased inequality. The hypothesis
is demonstrated through a case study in the right to
housing in Rio de Janeiro and the judicial solution created
in order to give flesh to a right without any statutory
delimitation. A constitutional interpretation that transfers
to the Judiciary the inherent urge to create from scratch
a right content that should be delimitated through
democratic distributive decisions is not the solution.
Serkan Yolcu: A New Step for the Protection of
Social Rights: Some Observations on Individual
Application to CESCR
The Optional Protocol to the International Covenant
on Economic Social and Cultural Rights which entered
into force in 2013 created a new function for the Committee
on Economic Social and Cultural Rights: the
citizens of the countries party to the Protocol can make
individual application to the Committee claiming that
their rights under the Covenant was violated. There
are currently five individual applications before the
Committee and only one application (I.D.G. v. Spain)
has been decided which concerned right to housing.
IDG decision might be seen as a first step towards
a new turn in the context of quasi-judicial review of
social rights. In this context, this study will examine
the process and remedy of the Committee’s new competence
and the IDG decision within the framework of
other international and comparative practices around
the world and analyze whether individual application
to the Committee would in fact make sense for the
vulnerable people or not.
Lucia Scaffardi and Monica Cappelletti: Crossborder
health care mobility: a third way of
access of a more equal health care system?
The paper aims to investigate a possible third way
of the welfare state system to add to public and private
system based. The study examines firstly critical
aspects of social rights in relation with economic and
social crisis. Then, it focuses on the health care right
and in particular the cross-border health care right that
is developing in the European Union. This fundamental
right, traditionally connected to the place where the
person resides, may be enjoyed in another Member
State. In this way, this new form of right may be theoretically
a new mode of a social right to be added to the
two established forms of welfare state. However, this
cross-border right raises questions about the real possibility
to access to health systems in terms of equality.
In fact, despite of European citizens are guaranteed the
cross-border health care right, it is subject to objective
constraints. Finally, the paper examines if this third way
right is a source of (in)equalities.
Concurring panels 175