A/HRC/16/63 national and international non-governmental organizations and national human rights institutions. Regional and national monitoring mechanisms have already proven to be very useful for the implementation of the rights of people working in rural areas.81 New international instruments, such as the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights adopted by the General Assembly in December 2008, will offer new possibilities for access to justice at the international level. 61. Better use should also be made of soft law instruments that improve the visibility of existing human rights norms protecting the rights of peasants and other people living in rural areas. In 2007, the Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living, and on the right to nondiscrimination in this context developed a set of basic principles and guidelines on development-based evictions and displacement to fill in operational gaps in relation to forced evictions.82 The objective of the principles and guidelines was to offer a step-by-step approach that States could follow to ensure that the necessary displacements and evictions due to development are conducted in compliance with existing human rights law. In 2009, the Special Rapporteur on the right to food developed a set of core principles and measures to address the human rights challenge to set criteria to be followed by States and companies in order to respect existing human rights law when buying or leasing land in other countries.83 B. Addressing normative gaps under international human rights law 62. Existing international human rights instruments, even if they were better implemented, remain insufficient to protect fully the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas. These groups have suffered historic and persistent discrimination in many countries around the globe, and the existing protection of their rights is insufficient to overcome this situation. It is therefore necessary to go beyond existing norms and address the normative gaps under international human rights law. 63. In his report submitted to the Human Rights Council in 2007, the Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing recommended that the Council should recognize the right to land in international human rights law.84 The Special Rapporteur on the right to food, in his report presented to the General Assembly in October 2010, recommended that international human rights bodies should consolidate the right to land.85 The current process of elaborating voluntary guidelines on responsible governance of tenure of land and other natural resources at FAO is also intended to address the same gap. These recommendations and initiatives should be supported. C. New legal instrument on the rights of people working in rural areas 64. The current initiatives to address existing gaps in international human rights law should be complemented by others. The fact that the great majority of peasants and other people working in rural areas are engaged in the informal sector, and are therefore not covered by ILO Conventions, is of particular concern, as is the fact that their need to have a 81 82 83 84 85 Christophe Golay, The Right to Food and Access to Justice: Examples at the national, regional and international levels (Rome, FAO, 2009). A/HRC/4/18, annex I. A/HRC/13/33/Add.2, annex. A/HRC/4/18, para. 33 (e). A/65/281, para. 43 (d). 19