The substantive rights prescribed in international human rights treaties are often subject to debate, discussion and disagreement, and rightly so. However, the effectiveness of international human rights treaties as a whole, and the accompanying treaty bodies (TBs) - the expert committees established to evaluate state parties’ compliance with treaty obligations, are not often examined.
Each treaty body carries out its function by periodically reviewing state parties reports on the steps taken to give effect to the treaty, and by considering individual communications from other actors and groups within the state. Although increasing the effectiveness of individual communications is a complex issue in and of itself, this short piece examines the problems relating to the state reporting system.
The committee examines the state’s report, engages in dialogue with the state delegation to discuss substantive issues, and makes concluding observations based on the report and dialogue. These observations take the form of recommendations which the state ought to act upon during the next reporting period.
However, the latest statistics highlight two major and recurring problems of the TB system. Firstly, as of October 2019, 81% of state parties (159 of 197 State Parties) had overdue reports, including 250 initial reports and 319 periodic reports. Secondly, at current capacity the committees will require one year to clear the backlog of state reports and six years to clear the backlog of individual communications, before even considering any new individual communications.
THE REFORM PROCESS
Proposals for TB reform are nothing new and have been on the agenda as far back as 1988. Arguably the most ambitious idea to date - the 2006 proposal by the High Commissioner for Human Rights that a unified standing treaty body be created, failed to receive broad political support. The most recent reform was launched by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in 2014 with the adoption of Resolution 68/268, calling for a treaty body review in 2020. Presented with the recurring problems of non-compliance with reporting obligations, insufficient financial resources, and incoherence between the different treaty bodies, the informal consultations process chaired by the Permanent Representatives of Switzerland and Morocco to the UN must face challenging discussions with member states, and submit an effective report to the President of the UNGA by the end of the current session.
The items on the agenda at the recent consultation on July 27 included the use of new information and communication technology, the nomination and selection process of treaty body members, technical cooperation and capacity, budgetary issues, interaction with different actors, and individual communications. Given that no standardized reporting schedule exists among the TBs, confronting the issue of cooperation and capacity appears imperative for effective reform, especially since the number of TBs has grown to ten in the past decade.
CHALLENGES TO BE ADDRESSED
While the statistics point towards only a small percentage of states reporting on time (19%), such statistics do not necessarily reflect an opposition of states towards their international obligations. Instead, they may reflect the ineffectiveness of a system where the different TBs - created under individual treaties, without an eye towards functioning as one overall body, require state parties to produce periodic reports on every aspect of compliance, with no standardized reporting calendar. Despite an invitation to TBs in resolution 68/268 to establish a fixed calendar “with the aim of achieving a clear and regularized schedule for reporting by States parties”, such an aim has yet to be fully implemented.
Aside from establishing an agreed reporting schedule among the treaty bodies, it is also worth highlighting the need for cooperation between the different TBs at the dialogue stage of the report. Research shows that from January 2009 to November 2010, the Dutch government discussed issues of human trafficking, domestic violence and violence against children before five different treaty bodies.
POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS
If major reforms related to funding and increased meeting times of the TBs are unlikely to be agreed upon, then more effective use of resources must be paramount. As such, it has been argued that less is more. One way to do that could be through narrowing reports and dialogues with state parties to a limited number of issues instead of reviewing compliance with a whole treaty, requiring “states to increase the quality and detail of input in their reports to the treaty bodies”. Such a reform would also reduce the time frame between submission of the report, the dialogue, and concluding observations. This is pertinent given that “it is not uncommon that there is a four year period between the end date of the period examined and the discussion in Geneva”. Such a large time frame only exacerbates overdue state reporting, since state parties will know that by the time their report proceeds to the dialogue stage, it will most likely be out of date.
While it is beyond the scope of this post to examine further solutions in detail, an Academic Platform report by the Geneva Academy on the 2020 review suggests improvements to the system of state reporting. One proposal is to create a single state report (SSR), whereby “state parties would be reviewed by all relevant TBs during the same week every seven to eight years”. The “SSR would contain a general section that covered all the treaties a state has ratified, followed by sections that are treaty-specific”. Such a system would not require submission of periodic reports to the separate TB committees and may thus potentially increase the consistency of reporting, while reducing the gaps between the submission of a report, dialogue, and discussion.
Whether these ideas are discussed and acted upon by General Assembly members over the coming months remains to be seen. However, it is clear that small incremental changes may reach a consensus as opposed to larger structural changes to the International human rights TB System.
Robert is an LL.B. graduate of Trinity College Dublin, including a year on exchange at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Robert is an LL.M candidate in International Human Rights Law and wishes to pursue a career in International affairs. His research interests lie in the effectiveness of international human rights treaty monitoring bodies and their relationship with transitional justice mechanisms. Robert is currently an intern at a human rights law firm and has previously worked as a Research Assistant in the field of Public International Law at the School of law, Trinity College Dublin.