UN Human Rights Treaty System – Importance – Listing + Analysis of Why This System Should Be Continued
Author: WUNRN
Date: March 15, 2018
Leave the UN’s Human-Rights Treaty System Alone
By Bertrand Ramcharan • January 7, 2018
………………………………………………………………..
Article Author -Dr.Bertrand Ramcharan – http://www.ohchr.org/EN/AboutUs/Pages/Ramcharan.aspx
Dr. Bertrand Ramcharan was Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights and Assistant Secretary-General when Mr. Sergio Vieira de Mello, then High Commissioner, was killed on 19 August 2003 during the attack on the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad. Dr. Ramcharan then assumed the post of acting High Commissioner for Human Rights, which he held until July 2004, when a new High Commissioner, was appointed by the United Nations Secretary-General.
During his three decades with the United Nations, Dr. Ramcharan served in the Centre for Human Rights as Special Assistant to the Director, as the Secretary-General’s Chief Speechwriter, as Director of the Office of the Special Representative for the Secretary-General in UNPROFOR, the largest-ever United Nations peacekeeping operation, as Director of the International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia, as political adviser to the peace negotiators in the Yugoslav conflict, and as a Director in the United Nations Political Department, focusing on conflicts in Africa.
Dr. Ramcharan was from 2011 to 2015 President of UPR Info, an NGO working to promote and strengthen the Universal Periodic Review.
The United Nations Charter requires each and every member state to discharge its obligations by faithfully carrying out norms of legally binding international human-rights law. These may be norms of international customary law, those contained in treaties or those flowing from general principles of international law.
The human-rights provisions in the Charter were amplified by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that, in turn, were amplified in specific international human-rights treaties, 10 of which have supervisory machineries in the form of reporting systems, individual petitions procedures, state-to-state complaints procedures, fact-finding visits to countries and dedicated supervisory bodies.
The UN has Charter-based organs that are meant to promote and protect human rights universally. These include the General Assembly, the Human Rights Council, the Economic and Social Council, the Security Council and the International Court of Justice. Apart from the International Court of Justice, these are mainly political organs that perform with varying degrees of efficacy or integrity.
Alongside the Charter-based organs, there are organs that were established under the main treaties. These organs have defined tasks that are laid down in their respective treaty. Said simply, they are called upon to discuss with states parties reports about their obligations of conduct or results, as defined by the treaty in question.
The discussions can involve making recommendations to particular governments, synthesizing their recommendations to states parties in general comments, delivering views or decisions on petitions filed and considered in accordance with the given treaty and, where applicable, conducting visits on the spot and indicating their findings.
Generally, both Charter-based and treaty-based bodies can be hortatory. However, the mandate of the treaty bodies is to be faithful to the agreements they supervise. This is the big difference between Charter-based and treaty-based bodies.
Both Charter-based bodies and treaty-based bodies draw criticisms for alleged deficiencies, and there are various ideas and proposals to improve them. As far as the treaty bodies are concerned, discussions in intergovernmental and nongovernmental forums have touched on overlapping agendas and jurisprudence; whether treaty bodies could be harmonized; whether a better division of labor might be carried out among the treaty bodies; and even whether a unified standing treaty body might be established.
When contemplating the future of the UN human-rights treaty system, it is crucial to ask what underlying policy considerations should guide such a discussion. Is it political? Financial? Bureaucratic? Or should the aim be to protect people from gross violations of human rights? I shall touch on each of these here.
Politically, there is no doubt that influential countries, especially since the establishment of the Human Rights Council, have been advocating approaches that favor dialogue and consensus over allegedly confrontational policies. What this boils down to is insisting that even amid allegations of serious violations of human rights, the UN should talk with governments rather than highlight gross violations.
This approach has been creeping into the implementation of human-rights treaties and was largely at the base of the General Assembly’s initiative on treaty-body reform. Treaty bodies were designed to be independent in their assessment of national reports, in their comments on the reports and in rendering decisions on petitions. The General Assembly has begun the process of dismantling this independence. Not only has it insisted on constricting page limits for reports and treaty-body comments, but it is pushing for prior consultation with governments before comments are adopted.
In other words, the independent monitor is being told that he or she must consult or negotiate with the governments concerned on what the monitor thinks is right and just. This is a frightful and destructive course.
The very countries that advocate dialogue and consensus have also been pushing it on human-rights treaty bodies. This politicization should not be allowed to continue; they must continue to discharge their obligations and stand for the prevention of violations, the protection and promotion of human rights, always basing themselves on their particular treaty.
As for resources, the work of the treaty-supervisory procedures undoubtedly calls for financial and other requirements from member states and other sectors of the UN. It is crucial, therefore, to keep in mind that in nearly every instance, the human-rights treaties were drafted and adopted in response to gross violations of human rights being perpetrated by governments. Fundamentally, the purpose of each treaty is to prevent and help stop gross violations of human rights.
Violations of human rights remain rampant across the world. Can it be seriously argued that governments or the UN should not deploy the modest resources that are needed for the treaty bodies to function? Those who try to tamper with the human-rights treaty system must beware that they run the risk of weakening the only bodies in the UN human-rights system that pronounce on whether, legally and factually, governments are fulfilling their obligations under international human-rights law.
Bureaucratic requirements should not be allowed to impinge on such important policy consideration. One sometimes hears about overlaps, inconsistencies, fragmentation of jurisprudence. These are bureaucratic and academic foibles. The people of the UN who are suffering from gross violations of human rights would condemn those responsible for eviscerating the treaty system.
The UN human-rights treaty system should be left as it is for the foreseeable future. There is certainly room for practical cooperation and harmonization through the annual meetings of chairpeople of the human-rights treaty bodies, which encompass matters of detail.
What is of essence is that the human-rights treaty bodies maintain the task of helping to prevent gross violations of human rights and helping to marshal protection for victims. Governments have ratified the various treaties. Now they must be held accountable for carrying them out. Governments and the UN can — and should — bear the costs of the continued functioning of the human-rights treaty bodies.
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/Pages/TreatyBodies.aspx
Monitoring the core international human rights treaties What are the treaty bodies? The human rights treaty bodies are committees of independent experts that monitor implementation of the core international human rights treaties. Each State party to a treaty has an obligation to take steps to ensure that everyone in the State can enjoy the rights set out in the treaty. There are ten human rights treaty bodies composed of independent experts of recognized competence in human rights, who are nominated and elected for fixed renewable terms of four years by State parties Which treaties do they monitor? Human Rights Committee (CCPR) monitors implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966) and its optional protocols; Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) monitors implementation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966); Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) monitors implementation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965); Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) monitors implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979) and its optional protocol (1999); Committee against Torture (CAT) monitors implementation of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment (1984); Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) monitors implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) and its optional protocols (2000); Committee on Migrant Workers (CMW) monitors implementation of the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (1990); Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) monitors implementation of the International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006); Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED) monitors implementation of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (2006); and The Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (SPT) established pursuant to the Optional Protocol of the Convention against Torture (OPCAT) (2002) visits places of detention in order to prevent torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
A highly significant example for women is the CEDAW Convention & The CEDAW Committee Treaty Body. http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/CEDAW/pages/cedawindex.aspx
http://www.passblue.com/2018/01/07/leave-the-uns-human-rights-treaty-system-alone/
|
Categories: Releases, Slider Featured