Research

SRAC provides important research into social rights, based on a participatory research model and extensive consultation with affected communities. SRAC board members are all active in a number of SRAC research projects and oversee the direction of SRAC research. SRAC also relies on an extensive network of academic researchers and practitioners from across Canada and around the world for assistance and consultion in its research initiatives. Its innovative research model bridges academic and community and domestic and international research.

SRAC's research focuses on enhancing social rights accountability mechanisms at the local, provincial, national and international levels, providing research and organizational support for community organizations to develop capacity in social rights practice, and compiling and analysing emerging case law, including pleadings and strategic approaches used in this area. Through funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council - Community University Research Alliance (CURA), SRAC provides part-time funding for its Executive Director to co-direct the Social Rights Accountabilitiy Project. That research has been unanimously judged by a Mid-term Adjudication Committee for the Social Sciences and the Humanities Research Council as “among the best ones reviewed.” Many recent developments in the area of social rights countability , both in Canada and internationally, were supported by research and action initiated under the project. The project has been presented to international visitors as exemplary of the principles behind, and the effectiveness of, the CURA model.

Some of the research outcomes of the SRAP at www.srap.ca/publications

• Hear excerpt of show on social rights developed in collaboration with Paul Kennedy, host of CBC's Ideas: “Rights or Wrongs” heard by approximately 400,000 listeners;

• Extensive research and organizational support for the drafting of the historic Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (OP-ICESCR)(supplemented by funding from Rights and Democracy)

• Unprecedented engagement by civil society organizations, with strong research support from academics and students, in periodic reviews by UN human rights bodies. See, for example, the compilation of NGO submissions and the submission of the Charter Committee on Poverty Issues for the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights at http://www2.ohchr.org/onenglish/bodies/cescr/cescrs36.htm.

• Development of innovative case law database on economic, social and cultural rights for ESCR-Net, which includes pleadings, evidence, strategies, media coverage and information on how litigation can be connected to social movements at http://www.escr-net.org/caselaw

 

Current areas of research include:

• International Adjudication Under the New OP-ICESCR. Strategies and Challenges.

• Statutory Minimum Fine Provisions without any fine option program as a violation of s.15 of the Charter of Rights

• The reasonableness standard of review of positive measures - toward a convergence of disability rights and anti-poverty strategies

• Poverty in affluent countries as a violation of justiciable international human rights norms