CYIL vol. 14 (2023)

JAN LHOTSKÝ and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which both came into effect in 1976. The first treaty above established the Human Rights Committee, and the second is now monitored by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. As of today, there are 10 such human rights treaty bodies, 2 each of them monitoring how states parties implement their ‘parent treaty’. The treaty bodies (committees) engage in several activities. First, they review states’ compliance with the treaty. A state party is periodically, mostly once in four years, obliged to submit a report on its compliance. Based on this and other information, for example from national human rights institutions and NGOs, the committee engages in a constructive dialogue with the delegation from the state. Subsequently it issues ‘concluding observations’ with a set of recommendations for the state to implement in the following period. Second, if the particular state entrusts a treaty body with the competence to deal with individual complaints, the committee exercises quasi-judicial powers by deciding on communications from individuals who claim violation of their rights. 3 As the system is open to all UN member states and the six major treaties have more than 170 ratifications or accessions each, 4 the idea is that it creates a universal (or global) standard of human rights protection. However, this is not the case in reality. On the one hand, there may be many political reasons for that, which will not be discussed in this paper. Nevertheless, on the other hand, there are also a number of reasons stemming from the set-up of the treaty body system itself including how the different committees work. It is the quality of their functioning that will be the subject of this article. Table 1: Existing treaty bodies

Entry into force

Treaty abbreviation

Body

Treaty

Adoption

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination

ICCPR

1966

1976

Human Rights Committee

Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

ICESCR 1966

1976

Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

ICERD 1966

1969

2 For more on the particular committees, see Treaty Bodies, OHCHR accessed 26 February 2023. In comparison with the other nine treaty bodies, the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT) has a specific preventive mandate. 3 In addition, treaty bodies have other tasks that this article will not focus on, such as inquiry procedure or urgent actions. See for example Inquiry Procedure, CEDAW, OHCHR accessed 26 February 2023. 4 See UN Treaty Collection accessed 26 February 2023. The sentence refers to the following treaties: ICCPR, ICESCR, ICERD, CEDAW, CAT and CRC.

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