Right to clothing

The right to adequate clothing, or the right to clothing, is recognized as a human right in various international human rights instruments; this, together with the right to food and the right to housing, are parts of the right to an adequate standard of living as recognized under Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). The right to clothing is similarly recognized under Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

The right to clothing forms an aspect of the right to an adequate standard of living, and as such, is regarded as something that needs to be ensured so as to prevent people from living below the poverty line. Indeed, being ill-clothed is emblematic of acute poverty:

We see it in the shivering or sweltering discomfort of 'beggars,' the homeless, the drug dependent and the 'derelict,' the elderly, the invalided, the 'street kid' or the just plain poor. Their plight has provoked condemnation, blame, disgust and derision, but religious, moral and secular creeds have in contrast exhorted us to respond with love, charity, mercy, with empathy and in a spirit of justice.

To illustrate how far-reaching the right to clothing potentially is, Dr Stephen James has provided a non-exhaustive list of beneficiaries of the right to minimum clothing. Included on this list are those sections of society that suffer the greatest from a lack of clothing, such as:

The lack of discussion about the right to clothing has led to uncertainty as to the ambit of the right and how much clothing is required. Matthew Craven notes that a minimum level of clothing is what is required to be provided; it is of "paramount importance not least because at minimum levels it represents a question of survival." This requirement of a "minimum" or "adequate" standard is mirrored in reports from the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and a report from the Consortium For Street Children, as well as a number of General Comments from the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) as regards the elderly, disabled, and workers. There is, however, no indication as to what such a "minimum" or "adequate" standard entails: indeed, only rarely has the CESCR questioned a party state of the ICESCR on its performance with respect to the right to clothing.

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Wikipedia