CYIL vol. 14 (2023)

CYIL 14 (2023) STREAMLINING OR SURVIVAL? OUTCOMES OF THE HUMAN RIGHTS … be diplomats or government officials. 26 Therefore, in some cases there are differences in the committee members’ levels of independence or expertise. 27 All the above-mentioned problems contribute to the treaty bodies being too complicated and inefficient. This results in very limited media attention and awareness about the existence of the system by the rights holders. 3. Treaty body reform efforts The idea that the operation of treaty bodies has important deficiencies that should be fixed is not new. In fact, different measures have been discussed for more than 30 years. 28 It is suitable to briefly mention them as some may still be relevant today. 3.1 Reform and ‘strengthening’ proposals from late 1980s until 2014 In 1989, an independent expert, Philip Alston, appointed by the UN Secretary General, published a report on long-term approaches with regard to the treaty bodies. Already at this point, he criticized the problems of reporting procedures, the burden of coexisting reporting systems on states, as well as overlapping reporting requirements. 29 In his last report of 1997, he focused on the problem of significantly overdue reports. 30 At the beginning of a new millennium, a report of the Secretary General suggested that one of the measures that could be taken to help states achieving higher cooperation with the treaty bodies was to introduce a single report. 31 By implementing this proposal, the states would provide the committees with one comprehensive report with respect to all human rights treaties they are party to. The idea was discussed among different stakeholders but was rejected as there was concern that it could lead to side-lining of a number of rather specific issues. 32 Based on former Secretary General Kofi Annan’s report In larger Freedom which, among other things, called for a more efficient treaty body system, 33 the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, proposed merging all committees into one Unified Standing Treaty Body (USTB). This would be a permanent committee of experts covering all human rights obligations of states. 34 Such a radical move would simplify the system tremendously and lower the reporting burden of states. However, it had a number of legal obstacles as it is very likely that it would not be possible to implement such a reform without amending the 26 See United Nations reform 2012 (n 8) p. 77. 27 On a more positive note, research suggests that taking the highly political electoral process into consideration, the overall level of independent expertise possessed by committees is surprisingly high, mainly due to the fact that it is a group endeavour (influence of other expert members and the chairperson). See CARRARO, Valentina, ‘Electing the experts: Expertise and independence in the UN human rights treaty bodies’ (2019) 25 EJIR , pp. 826, 845. In addition, the matter has been discussed by the Geneva Academy, which presented interesting proposals to deal with the challenges. See CALLEJON, Claire, ‘Promoting Quality, Independent and Diverse Treaty Body Membership’ (2021) Geneva Academy. 28 For a good overview of important sources, see Treaty body strengthening, OHCHR (n 10). 29 UNGA ‘Report of Philip Alston’ (1989) UN Doc A/44/668, pp. 4–5, 20–6.

30 UNHCR ‘Report of Philip Alston’ (1997) UN Doc E/CN.4/1997/74, pp. 5, 13–16. 31 UNGA ‘Report of the Secretary-General’ (2002) UN Doc A/57/387, para. 54. 32 UNGA ‘Report from Malbun’ (2003) UN Doc A/58/123, paras 20–28. 33 UNGA ‘Letter from Secretary-General’ (2005) UN Doc A/59/2005, para. 147. 34 OHCHR ‘Concept paper’ (2006) UN Doc HRI/MC/2006/2.

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