On 24 October 2025, during a government shutdown, the US Department of Agriculture announced that it would halt monthly food assistance payments to over 42 million Americans as part of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (“SNAP”), affecting a large number of vulnerable persons, including children, elderly people, and people with disabilities. Food access is among the most basic of human needs, and backlash quickly followed in national and international media. However, very few commentators have framed the issue in terms of international human rights law. Though a domestic crisis, this blog argues that the US government’s approach to food stamp funding at home is indicative of how it views socioeconomic rights on a global scale: as aspirational goals, or even aspirational privileges, rather than binding legal rights that incur corresponding state duties. Seen in this context, the United States’ avoidance of the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (“ICESCR”) becomes acutely significant.

On an international level, the United States does not formally recognize socioeconomic rights to the same extent as it does civil and political ones. Though an active participant in the drafting of the UDHR and an early party to the ICCPR, it has to date failed to ratify the ICESCR, which was signed by President Carter in 1977. A President may sign a treaty unilaterally; ratification, on the other hand, requires the additional consensus of two-thirds of the Senate. Once signed, a treaty is submitted to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations for approval or rejection. No such decision seems to have been made for the ICESCR, which has been left to languish in a kind of treaty-purgatory.

However, under Article 18(a) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, a state that has signed but not ratified a treaty must refrain from committing any acts that directly contradict that treaty’s object and purpose. This article raises the question of whether the Trump administration’s halting of SNAP payments could constitute a directly contradictory act.

In terms of object and purpose, Article 11 of the ICESCR lays out the right to an adequate standard of living, including the right to adequate food. This indicates that governments must take steps to implement measures to alleviate hunger and address systemic food access issues, especially when read in light of the Convention’s Preamble. According to its opening lines, a core ideal of the ICESCR is the freedom of human beings from ‘fear and want’, which requires observance of socioeconomic rights as much as it does civil and political ones. Arguably, the cancellation of SNAP payments directly contradicted this ideal by escalating rather than easing American citizens’ ‘fear and want’.

Often, violations of socioeconomic rights are presented with a dose of ambiguity. While civil and political rights usually require the government to refrain from acting – to refrain, for example, from censorship or torture – socioeconomic rights necessitate long-term planning, commitment, and costs. It is easier to present their infringement as the consequence of uncontrollable economic forces or rights-holders’ personal choices rather than state conduct.

This is not the case here. Arguably, the Trump administration’s refusal to fund the SNAP program showcases all the hallmarks of a directly contradictory act, or what Scott Leckie terms “the abject unwillingness of a state to respect a norm when it is clearly capable of doing so.” The cuts amount to a policy in the style of infringement that typically impacts civil and political rights: it intentionally withdraws a currently enjoyed legal entitlement. The US government failed to act in accordance with established legal obligations, laid out in legislation and court orders, with the result that millions of households face delays in receiving vital food aid.

Even without ratification, therefore, it could be possible that the United States has failed to uphold its obligations under international law. But these obligations may remain vague and half-baked unless fully implemented into its domestic legal system. Even in the tradition of legal realism which the United States embraces, there are arguments for the significance of ratifying the ICESCR. Treaty ratification is a powerful tool for norm-building, a core tenet of international legal realism. The ICESCR provides a solid textual basis for introducing the language of socioeconomic rights into domestic spheres, with the potential to provide valuable interpretative aid for judges and a stronger vocabulary for advocates. The United States’ decision to ratify would signal new opportunities for future progress.