“We are an essential part of the international human rights complaints system”, said Aoife Nolan, President of the Council of Europe’s Committee of Social Rights, in a speech delivered on Thursday 6 July at the opening of the conference organised to mark the 25th anniversary of the Additional Protocol to the European Social Charter, which came into force on 1 July 1998.
The Social Charter itself was adopted in 1961, to complement the European Convention on Human Rights, which is...