Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom

 

REFORMING THE UN HUMAN RIGHTS TREATY BODY SYSTEM:

Focusing on enhancing its monitoring role

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The UN Treaty Body system achieved important developments for the promotion and the protection of human rights, providing an avenue for holding states accountable through reporting and communications procedures. The treaty body system, however, cannot monitor implementation effectively without the will of states to comply with their reporting obligations. The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom has a concern with the effective, careful reform of the UN at large and with the improvement treaty body system in particular. Following, are some findings WILPF has identified regarding the principal weaknesses of the UN human rights Treaty system with particular focus on the issue of non-reporting and ratification.

 

It is important to acknowledge the positive role that reporting procedures have had in bringing national legislation in line with international human rights standards. Thus, the human rights treaty system must safeguard its continuation and address the problems and challenges it faces. In a commentator’s words, after over thirty years of functioning, the system has developed so rapidly, “that it has problems of which human rights proponents in earlier eras could only have dreamed. Those problems are certainly considerable, but they must be viewed against the background of the historical evolution of the systems.”[1] Our recommendations today are presented with the hope of strengthening the human rights treaty system and supporting this evolution process. We also welcome the efforts of the High Commissioner to enhance the effectiveness of the human rights treaty system; however, has a reserved view on the proposal to create a single, unified treaty body.

 

Problems and Challenges:

 

Currently the human rights treaty system faces four main challenges:

 

a)      The ‘chronic’ failure of State Parties to report (or report on time).

b)      The significant backlog of reports to be considered facing treaty bodies (hereinafter TB), which needs to be addressed in conjunction with the non-reporting problem; since the system would collapse if all State Parties complied with their reporting obligations.

c)      The lack of effective and harmonized follow-up procedures.

d)      The persistent failure of states to ratify human rights treaties.