Human rights institutions and mechanisms
Human rights implementation and impact
Thematic human rights issues
Prevention, accountability and justice
By invitation

Putting people at the heart of the human rights treaty body system

by Ashley Bowe, Senior Human Rights Advisor, SPC RRRT and Joshua Cooper, Lecturer, University of Hawai’i, National Universal Periodic Review Task Force Co-Chair, US Human Rights Network Blog, Blog, By invitation, By invitation, Human rights implementation and impact, Human rights institutions and mechanisms, Implementation, International human rights institutions, mechanisms and processes, Treaty Bodies, Universal Periodic Review

Samoa held a ground-breaking treaty body session on child rights, evidencing the benefits of extending these sessions beyond Geneva. Calls for treaty body committees to undertake their sessions  on the ground have been made for decades. The first ever such session recently took place in the Pacific, providing empirical evidence of the significant opportunities and slight obstacles of this practice. The genesis of this session can be traced back …

Human rights treaty bodies in the field: The experience of the African regional system

by Christof Heyns, Professor of Human Rights Law, Univeristy of Pretoria and Member of the UN Human Rights Committee and Abiola Idowu-Ojo, Acting Deputy Secretary of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights Blog, By invitation, By invitation, Human rights implementation and impact, International human rights institutions, mechanisms and processes, Treaty Bodies

In a 2017 post  on this site, Christof Heyns and Willem Gravett proposed the idea of external sessions for the UN Human Rights Treaty Bodies – they should meet at least once a year for part of the session outside Geneva, in order to ‘bring the system closer to the people’. This idea generated considerable interest, including in the recent report by the Geneva …

Bringing the UN Treaty Body system closer to the people

by Christof Heyns, Professor of Human Rights Law, Univeristy of Pretoria and Member of the UN Human Rights Committee, Willem Gravett, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria and Geneva Blog, By invitation, By invitation, Human rights implementation and impact, International human rights institutions, mechanisms and processes, Treaty Bodies

The ongoing process of strengthening the UN Treaty Body system provides a welcome opportunity to reflect on some of our hidden assumptions. The Treaty Bodies have over time gravitated towards Geneva, and it now appears to be the assumption that this is simply the way things should be done. Notwithstanding, we want to argue that reform of the human rights Treaty …

Treaty Body reform

In February 2012, the General Assembly initiated an ‘intergovernmental’ review process aimed at strengthening the UN human rights Treaty Body system. This state-led process concluded on 9th April 2014, with the General Assembly’s adoption of resolution 68/268 on ‘strengthening and enhancing the effective functioning of the human rights treaty body system’. If correctly implemented by all relevant stakeholders, this resolution …

UN General Assembly Concludes its Review of the Human Rights Treaty Bodies

by Christen Broecker Blog, By invitation, By invitation, Human rights institutions and mechanisms, International human rights institutions, mechanisms and processes, Treaty Bodies

The United Nations General Assembly today (9th April) completed a two-year review of a key part of the UN’s human rights architecture: the human rights treaty bodies. The review occurred in the context of and built on ideas generated from a broader effort by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to ‘strengthen’ the treaty bodies. The outcome of the …

The UN General Assembly and the Strengthening of the United Nations Human Rights Treaty Body System

by Professor Michael O'Flaherty Human rights institutions and mechanisms, International human rights institutions, mechanisms and processes, Treaty Bodies

On 11th February, the 3rd Committee of the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution on “strengthening and enhancing the effective functioning of the human rights treaty body system”. Although the matter still needs to be considered by those who control the purse strings in the General Assembly’s 5th Committee, the resolution’s adoption can be said to mark a defining …