La justiciabilité des droits économiques, sociaux et culturels dans la jurisprudence congolaise: Regard cursif sur l’Affaire Jean de Dieu Mulikuza c. la Société Nationale d’Électricité et la République Démocratique du Congo

The Congolese Judge is reluctant to impose financial obligations on the State on the basis of economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR). However, this unwillingness is not due to the false claim of the legal invalidity of these rights, nor to the complexity of their implementation, which would not be appropriate for judicial review. The jurisprudence of the Court of Appeal of Bukavu reveals that while the judge is not, as a matter of principle, opposed to the justiciability of ESCR when it comes to interpreting and applying the procedural and substantive guarantees relating to these rights, the devil is in the details. The case of Jean de Dieu Mulikuza v. Société Nationale d'Electricité and the Democratic Republic of Congo provides an understanding of this phenomenon. When confronted with a questioning of its power in ESC rights, the judge affirms that harmful actions resulting from any failure of the State to guarantee these rights fall within its jurisdiction. While this assertion heralded the future of the judicial protection of ESC rights, the subsequent proceedings belied this assumption. By choosing the applicable law, the judge transposed to the field of responsibility for human rights violations, and in particular the right to non-discrimination, a reasoning of purely contractual responsibility. This contribution aims to explore the impact of such an approach on the justiciability of the rights invoked.