Analysing India’s Universal Periodic Review Submissions on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process involves a cyclical peer review of a State’s fulfilment of its human rights obligations under various international humanitarian law instruments ratified by the State. This review consists of three reports with large disparities apparent between the information submitted by the National Report and the realities noted by stakeholders and other peer nations. The paper undertakes an empirical study of India’s UPR submissions on its economic, social, and cultural obligations through its policies on education, health, housing, and sanitation and drinking water, and food security sectors. The paper thereby assesses the reports juxtaposed against the various Working Group recommendations to analyse their implementation patterns and gaps within the State over the span of ten years. While it seems that the Stakeholders have been active in recognizing the rights of groups suffering from lack of resources, the State under Review and the Working Group have been dormant in this regard. The Reports rarely recognised the intersectionality between the objectives of education, housing, food, water, and health and their inaccessibility to these special groups, thus adopting a myopic approach ignoring the groups that suffer from multiple disabilities in accessing to these resources. The paper concludes that although the recommendations rarely fructify, India has been widely lauded for its policies within these sectors.