Publication details
The UN Human Rights Treaty Body System – Reform, Strengthening or Postponement?
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2014 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Czech Yearbook of Public & Private International Law |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Web | http://www.rozkotova.com/ebooks/cyil2014/index.html#270 |
| Field | Law sciences |
| Keywords | Treaty body strengthening; human rights; universal level; Unified Standing Treaty Body; comprehensive reporting calendar; treaty bodies |
| Description | The article discusses the process of strengthening the human rights treaty bodies. This mechanism consists of treaty-based committees whose aim is to contribute to human rights protection in states parties without regional restrictions, i.e. on the universal level. The paper analyzes the deficiencies of the mechanism in which the low rate of states parties’ cooperation with the treaty bodies plays a very important role. Furthermore, it discusses the proposals to improve the functioning of the system from the 2006 reform proposal to merge all the committees into one full-time body, then the ‘treaty body strengthening process’ initiated in 2009 and finally an intergovernmental process within the UN General Assembly operating from 2012. It further evaluates the final outcome of the process in the form of the General Assembly resolution of April 2014. Although this document indeed includes several beneficial measures, it does not provide for implementing the ‘comprehensive reporting calendar’ which would have the real potential to decrease the states’ non-cooperation. The article therefore concludes that within the long-lasting negotiations, what was originally supposed to be a ‘reform’ was moderated into a ‘strengthening’; moreover, the strengthening itself has later been further weakened. As a result, only a very compromised outcome has been achieved and major challenges will therefore have to be addressed in the future. |