Analysis of the nature and the legal system of the State Commitments in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Economic, social and cultural rights today constitute an important part of legal human and citizenship rights which their instances may be observed in the most professional international treaty, namely the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. These rights are inserted in the Constitutions of many countries, including the Islamic of Republic of Iran and have obliged the states against such claims of the citizens. These rights and the state commitments toward them are always against the civil and political rights and in different ways are compared with them. But unlike the civil and political rights, identifying and guarantee of these rights are criticized in different ideological, philosophical and legal approaches and the commitments of the states against them are doubted in various forms.
The issue of this paper is to determine the nature of the state commitments against these rights and to clarify the legal regime governing them in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The research method used in this paper is descriptive and analytic. As a result, although the natural features of these commitments make them weak obligations, it is possible to strengthen their guarantee by constructing a firm legal regime to apply them. Although many substantive characteristics of these commitments can be identified in the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the legal regime governing them is less considered in comparison with the related Covenant.