The Institutional Future of the Covenants

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felice D Gaer
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Body System ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Human Rights Treaties ◽  
Treaty Monitoring ◽  
Treaty Body ◽  
International Human ◽  
Normative Standards ◽  
Individual Petition

Longstanding proposals to strengthen implementation of the international human rights treaties have often focused on procedural reforms such as harmonizing methods of work or consolidating ten treaty monitoring bodies into one. This article reviews past reform efforts and then considers proposals to create stronger individual petition mechanisms—including a ‘world court’—as a way of strengthening human rights implementation. After discussing these proposals, the author offers additional ways to make the system more effective and efficient. She rejects the oft-suggested proposal to create a ‘world court’ for human rights, noting legal, organizational, logistical, and financial obstacles. Rather than rushing to tear down the current treaty body system, the author offers a proposal for determining how consolidation of petition proceedings might affect normative standards.

scholarly journals The Proof Is in the Process: Self-Reporting Under International Human Rights Treaties

2019 ◽  
Vol 114 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cosette D. Creamer ◽  
Beth A. Simmons
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Capacity Building ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Human Rights Treaties ◽  
Treaty Monitoring ◽  
The Future ◽  
International Human

AbstractRecent research has shown that state reporting to human rights monitoring bodies is associated with improvements in rights practices, calling into question earlier claims that self-reporting is inconsequential. Yet little work has been done to explore the theoretical mechanisms that plausibly account for this association. This Article systematically documents—across treaties, countries, and years—four mechanisms through which reporting can contribute to human rights improvements: elite socialization, learning and capacity building, domestic mobilization, and law development. These mechanisms have implications for the future of human rights treaty monitoring.

Strategies for Reform: Facilitating Intersectionality in Human Rights Advocacy

2021 ◽  
pp. 209-244
Author(s):  
Johanna Bond
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Institutional Culture ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
Body System ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Intersectional Analysis ◽  
The World ◽  
Treaty Body ◽  
Human Rights Advocacy ◽  
International Human

An intersectional human rights framework offers victims of human rights violations the best chance to recover remedies that fully address the complex and structural dimensions of the violations. To be effective within any national, regional, or international human rights system, however, intersectionality must be part of the institutional culture. Members of the human rights bodies must be conversant with the theory and comfortable applying it in a variety of human rights scenarios. Chapter 7 explored the ways in which NGOs can facilitate intersectional analysis by engaging human rights bodies in the discourse of intersectionality. This chapter examines structural reforms within the UN human rights system that will foster intersectional analysis. Breaking down the silos in the treaty body system and creating opportunities for collaboration will help to facilitate system-wide intersectional analysis, all of which will benefit victims of human rights violations around the world.

scholarly journals Contested Representations

2013 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-359 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Factual Information ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Cultural Rights ◽  
Sovereign Equality ◽  
Periodic State ◽  
Human Rights Treaties ◽  
Treaty Body ◽  
International Human

As states become parties to international human rights treaties, they undertake the obligation to provide periodic state reports to UN human rights treaty bodies. Officially, state reports are paramount vehicles of factual information of a given state’s human rights situation. Unofficially their status may be contested and their data reduced to state propaganda. This article examines this transformation through the submission of China’s first state report to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The article shows how human rights documents of diverse genres join together in a continual ceremony of dialogue. It connects minute details of treaty body proceedings to more general developments in the international human rights field, and argues that beneath the veneer of diplomatic conduct accompanying human rights dialogue lays an intense struggle for representation and legitimacy. It further discusses how this struggle reflects the recent rise of Kantian theories of international law. These theories seek to re-evaluate the foundational concept of international law, namely ‘sovereign equality’, and, thus continue the mission civilisatrice that has characterized elements of international collaboration for centuries.

The Idea of International Human Rights Law

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Wheatley
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Moral Concept ◽  
Customary International Law ◽  
Human Rights Treaties ◽  
International Human ◽  
Fragmentation Of International Law

International Human Rights Law has emerged as an academic subject in its own right, separate from, but still related to, International Law. This book explains the distinctive nature of the new discipline by examining the influence of the moral concept of human rights on general international law. Rather than make use of moral philosophy or political theory, the work explains the term ‘human rights’ by examining its usage in international law practice, on the understanding that words are given meaning through their use. Relying on complexity theory to make sense of the legal practice in the United Nations, the core human rights treaties, and customary international law, The Idea of International Human Rights Law shows how a moral concept of human rights emerged, and then influenced the international law doctrine and practice on human rights, a fact that explains the fragmentation of international law and the special nature of International Human Rights Law.

The Fallacy of Effective Human Rights Protection under Relevant Treaty Law when Armed Groups Commit Violations

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tilman Rodenhäuser
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Armed Groups ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Human Rights Protection ◽  
Rights Protection ◽  
Human Rights Treaties ◽  
International Human

Chapter 5 adds to the contemporary discourse on human rights obligations of non-state armed groups by showing that in many situations, there is a clear legal need for these obligations. This chapter first engages in the debate on whether and to what extent certain human rights treaties address armed groups directly. Second, it shows that under the law of state responsibility, states are generally not responsible for human rights violations committed by non-state entities. Third, it recalls that under international human rights law, states have an obligation to protect human rights against violations committed by armed groups. However, it argues that because this cannot be a strict obligation but is one that depends on states’ capacities and the particular circumstances, often this framework cannot adequately protect individuals against human rights violations by armed groups. The result is a legal and practical need for human rights obligations of non-state armed groups.

Complementary Protection and Encampment

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bríd Ní Ghráinne
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Humanitarian Relief ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Treaty Monitoring ◽  
International Human ◽  
The Individual

Abstract A camp may be described as a temporary space in which individuals receive humanitarian relief and protection until a durable solution can be found to their situation. The camp environment is often riddled with contradictions—the camp can be a place of refuge while at the same time, a place of overcrowding, exclusion and suffering. This article asks to what extent removal of an individual from state A to state B, where he or she will have to live in a camp, is a breach of state A’s human rights law obligations. It argues that even if encampment in state B will expose the individual to terrible conditions, it is unlikely that they will be able to successfully challenge a removal decision before international human rights courts and/or treaty monitoring bodies.

Disability in International Human Rights Law

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gauthier de Beco
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Social Model ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Legal Subject ◽  
Human Rights Treaties ◽  
International Human ◽  
International Instruments

This book examines what international human rights law has gained from the new elements in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons (CRPD). It explores how the CRPD is intricately bound up with other international instruments by studying the relationship between the Convention rights and those protected by other human rights treaties as well as the overall objectives of the UN. Using a social model lens on disability, the book shows how the Convention sheds new light on the very notion of human rights. In order to so, the book provides a theoretical framework which explicitly integrates disability into international human rights law. It explains how the CRPD challenges the legal subject by drawing attention to distinct forms of embodiment, before introducing the idea of the ‘dis-abled subject’ stemming from a recognition that all individuals encounter disability-related issues in the course of their lives. The book also examines how to apply this theoretical framework to a number of rights and highlights the consequences for the implementation of human rights treaties as a whole. It not only builds upon available literature straddling different fields, which include disability studies and legal and political theory, but also draws upon the recommendations of treaty bodies and reports of UN agencies as well as disabled people’s organisations. The book provides an agenda-setting analysis for all human rights experts by inviting them to appreciate the benefits of placing disabled people at the heart of international human rights law.

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