CYIL vol. 14 (2023)

JAN LHOTSKÝ with their reporting obligations to treaty bodies. Moreover, 27% of these late reports are overdue for more than 10 years. 7 At the same time, if the states started to report on time, the current capacity of the committees that meet only for sessions of several weeks three times a year would not be able to process the given workload. In this respect, the former High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay aptly noted that it is unacceptable that the system can only function because of non-compliance. 8 This is only one example of the challenges of the system. I have been following the treaty bodies for more than a decade now and for this article, I carried out a research trip to the UN in Geneva. There (or in relation to it online) I conducted several semi-structured interviews with respective experts involved in the treaty body review or the system’s functioning. Among those there were three treaty body members, three staff members of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), four diplomats based in Geneva or New York, two representatives of NGOs involved in the agenda of treaty bodies and one representative of a government agent responsible for dealing with individual communications. In 2014 the UN General Assembly decided that six years later further measures to improve the system, which became the ‘treaty body review’, would be considered. 9 Although there have been some delays due to the pandemic, at the end of 2022 the review could be considered as concluded. Therefore, at the beginning of 2023 it is the right time to critically assess the outcome of the review and to potentially outline further necessary steps. I will first explain the major deficiencies and challenges of the system. After that, I will pay some attention to the reform efforts which have been discussed in the past. The reason for this is that many interesting proposals which were not implemented could still be relevant in the future. I will follow up with the outcome of the current ‘treaty body review’ process and explain to what extent, in my opinion, it should or should not be considered a success. This will be evaluated by assessing to what extent the supported proposals are aimed at eliminating the identified challenges of the system. Based on that, I will outline what measures should be considered in the future in order to enable the system to perform its tasks efficiently. This is of utmost importance as the very purpose of the mechanism is to contribute to upholding universal human rights, which should not be regarded as a legal exercise but as a contribution to the individual rights holders. 2. Challenges to the human rights treaty body system Already in the early 1990s when the first six human rights treaties with expert committees were in effect, it started to be clear that the operation of the treaty bodies was far from perfect. One of the reasons was that the committees were not designed as one system. When we have a closer look at the main deficiencies, the following eight issues should be stressed. 10

7 UNGA ‘Report of the Secretary-General’ (2022) UN Doc A/77/279 paras 14–15. 8 UNGA ‘United Nations reform: measures and proposals’ (2012) UN Doc. A/66/860 p. 9. 9 UNGA Res. 68/268 (21 April 2014) UN Doc A/RES/68/268 para. 41.

10 The selection of challenges reflects the author’s research to the topic, as well as his interviews with the stakeholders. Furthermore, see three issues pointed out by the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights – Treaty body strengthening, OHCHR accessed 26 February 2023.

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