III-h. United Nations Treaty Bodies
The two covenants and four other international human rights treaties have corresponding treaty bodies (committees) in the United Nations. Five of these were established by the corresponding treaties, but the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights was established by ECOSOC.
There is supposed to be a committee for the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, but it is not functioning. The Commission Against Apartheid in Sports, established by the International Convention Against Apartheid in Sports, is a treaty body, but its coverage is narrow, and it has had little impact. Another committee is to be created when the Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families enters into force.
It is the governments that sign and ratify (or otherwise accede to) the international human rights agreements that are responsible for carrying them out. In Philip Alston’s phrasing, "the essential role of each of the treaty bodies is to monitor and encourage compliance with a specific treaty regime." The committees’ task is to assure that the states parties are held accountable for fulfilling their commitments under the treaties.
Operating procedures vary among the six committees, but they have certain common features. All are comprised of independent experts rather than individuals representing particular governments. However, the distinction is often blurred (March and Olsen, p. 30).
The committees’ central function is to monitor the situation within nations to try to assure that national governments effectively implement their obligations under the treaties they have signed and ratified. This is done largely on the basis of reports the committees receive from the states parties to the conventions in accordance with procedures outlined in the conventions. The committees may also receive information from other sources such as United Nations specialized agencies or nongovernmental organizations, and they may, to a limited extent, make inquiries of their own. The treaty bodies are authorized to gather information, and they are also authorized to express their views and state their findings.
As indicated in the last column of Table III-2, the Human Rights Committee (HRC) may consider complaints from individuals in states that are parties to the first Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The Committee on Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and the Committee Against Torture (CAT) also can deal with complaints from individuals alleging violations of their rights under the relevant treaty. In contrast, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) and the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) have no procedures enabling them to respond to individual petitions. Efforts are underway to implement an Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights that would allow the CESCR to consider petitions from individuals.
There are procedures allowing for interstate complaints in HRC, CERD, and CAT, but they have not been used.
It is important to recognize that
A Committee is not a tribunal. It neither passes judgment nor does it condemn. The purpose of the presentation and the examination of the report is to start a constructive dialogue with the reporting State. The Committee wants to establish the de jure and the de facto situation in the reporting State, which it endeavours to assist to abide by the obligations assumed with the ratification of accession to the Convention (Kornblum, p. 52).
The committees are sometimes described as implementation mechanisms, but that is a mistake since the primary agents for implementation of the conventions are the states parties, not the treaty bodies. They are sometimes described as oversight or supervisory bodies, but that too is misleading because these terms suggest that the committees have authority over the states parties in the way that a supervisor might have authority over employees. The states parties are not subordinate to the treaty bodies. The treaty bodies may make suggestions, but they do not have the authority to direct the states parties to take any particular action.
Continue to III-i. Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
Subsection III-h last updated on June 13, 1999