New Committee on Disappearances elected

Congratulations to the new members of the Committee on Disappearances, elected yesterday (May 31st) in the first state parties meeting under the Convention on Enforced Disappearances that went into effect last December.

The new members of the Committee are:

Name	Nationality	Term expires
Mr. Mohammed AL-OBAIDI	Iraq	2013
Mr. Mamadou Badio CAMARA	Senegal	2015
Mr. Emmanuel DECAUX	France	2015
Mr. Alvaro GARCÉ GARCÍA Y SANTOS	Uruguay	2015
Mr. Luciano HAZAN	Argentina	2013
Mr. Rainer HUHLE	Germany	2013
Ms. Suela JANINA	Albania	2015
Mr. Juan José LÓPEZ ORTEGA	Spain	2015
Mr. Enoch MULEMBE	Zambia	2013
Mr. Kimio YAKUSHIJI	Japan	2013

More information can be accessed at the OHCHR website. The Committee will now schedule its first organizational meeting later in the year. I have not yet seen any information on when this meeting might occur.

The Committee represents the 11th treaty body now in the UN human rights system. As noted in the excerpt from the treaty included above, it will look into cases of enforced or arbitrary disappearances arising after the effective date of the Convention.

What is the extent of overdue state reporting in the human rights treaty body system?

Statistics about the human rights treaty body system have often been difficult to obtain. I welcome the recent initiative of the Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights to post some of this information. A link to state reporting statistics popped up recently at the High Commissioner's website. The downloadable spreadsheet indicates that a more complete database will eventually be available, but for the time being we are invited to read the data in spreadsheet format.

The introduction in the spreadsheet indicates that data is included up to March 25, 2011, to be updated monthly. For each treaty instrument it notes numbers of initial reports still not submitted by state parties, the number of periodic reports overdue from state parties, and some other statistical information. You need good eyesight or other assistance to read the details. It prints out to 3 pages, large A3 size paper, fine print. For purposes of this post I just wanted to focus on the late reporting data and compare it to total number of state parties for each human rights treaty.

The chart below is my interpretive illustration of the late reporting data for each treaty instrument (the new Convention on Enforced Disappearances, CED, is not included since it has just come into force). This is not an official UN chart -- it is my own adaptation of the data at the UN site. Hopefully this approach offers some interesting analysis. [For brevity's sake I'm going to use the same acronym for most treaty instruments and the treaty body tasked with administering it -- so CED refers both to the new Convention on Enforced Disappearances and the treaty body that will be created to administer it; the two exceptions are the CCPR and OPCAT, explained below at the end of this post].

Please note: I've not tried in this chart to depict the separate reports on optional protocols to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Since the CRC is the only treaty instrument with such reports, it would tend to skew the comparison. However, it should be noted that the volume of reporting under the CRC is considerably more than under any of the other treaty instruments due in part to these optional protocol reports. The optional protocol reports will eventually be subsumed into the main reporting work of the CRC and thereafter will not be managed as a separate stream.

Next, while these figures appear to show CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women) with one of the smallest non-reporting profiles, this status is somewhat misleading, since it is due in part to the large backlog of unreviewed reports that CEDAW has at the moment. States aren't late with their next report if the prior report has been submitted and is still awaiting review. But this observation is not intended to be a criticism of CEDAW either -- CEDAW is the treaty body with the second highest number of state parties (186), and it has historically had the smallest amount of regular treaty body session time allocated to it in UN budgets. CEDAW is currently under a catch-up schedule that will hopefully reduce the backlog soon.

The Committee Against Torture (CAT) also suffers from a large backlog of state reports to review, accounting for some of its lower percentage of late reporting. They too are under a special catch up schedule this year and next and will hopefully be able to reduce this backlog.

Another observation is that late reporting is approaching 50% of the entire state party membership for some treaty instruments. It is especially unfortunate that many states have not even filed their initial reports to the treaty body, some more than 20 years overdue.

It is my belief that a key to the success of the UN human rights treaty body system in the future, will be to manage this workload effectively, measure these trends, set improvement goals, and implement structures that both improve the state parties' reporting performance record and minimize the backlog swings from year to year. Comments welcome.

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The remaining treaty instruments and treaty bodies shown on the chart are as follows:

• CCPR -- Convention on Civil and Political Rights (administered by the Human Rights Committee)
• CESCR -- Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (committee of same name)
• CMW -- International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families (Committee on Migrant Workers)
• CRPD -- Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (committee of same name)

The 10th treaty instrument/treaty body, not shown in the above chart is:

• OPCAT -- Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (administered by the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture, SPT; this instrument does not have the state reporting mechanism of the other 9 treaty bodies)

11th Inter Committee meeting convened in June 2010

The 11th Inter Committee meeting of the UN human rights treaty bodies met June 28-30, 2010 in Geneva. This year for the first time, the companion chairpersons meeting took place in Brussels instead of Geneva, a practice that will apparently be taken up every other year in future years (the chairpersons will meet in Geneva one year, and then in a regional hub city the following year).

The Inter Committee meeting (ICM) presents an opportunity for members of each of the present 9 treaty bodies to share experiences and discuss reforms and improvements. Non governmental organizations (NGOs) and National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) are also invited to participate in some parts of the meeting. The organization of these meetings is undergoing change, with several important developments in the past year.

Among the developments this year:

• The next meeting date will be scheduled for January 2011 instead of December 2010, as previously indicated (the exact dates are not yet known). This will technically be a working group of the ICM, not the full ICM group. The discussion will focus on a single topic rather than many topics as in the past. The single agenda item will be how the treaty bodies can improve the followup and implementation aspects of their work -- in other words, how can they encourage states to implement the treaty body recommendations when a state report is heard or an individual case is decided. NGOs and NHRIs are welcome to participate. This should be an important session -- both because of the importance of the topic (implementation is one of the highest priorities for improvement in the system) and the debut of this new format.

• Both the Committee Against Torture and the Human Rights Committee are now experimenting with a different format for reviewing state reports. Rather than ask the state concerned to submit a report every 4-5 years that covers all topics in the relevant human rights treaty, a list of issues or questions is prepared by the Committee first and the state is requested to focus its report on those topic areas. The idea has some promise, permitting a more focussed debate on human rights issues that matter most in a country, rather than have the state issue a general report that often spends more time touting achievements than admitting or tackling concerns. It also has potential for reducing the mountain of paperwork that has become the standard procedure under the existing state reporting exercise. However, it is not yet clear how interested NGOs and NHRIs can participate effectively in such a changed procedure. I hope to take up this topic in more detail in a future post.

• More discussions occurred again this year on the harmonization of working methods between treaty bodies. Each treaty body has developed in isolation concerning many of its day to day working methods. It has led to a cacophony of different requirements for those who interact with the treaty bodies. One treaty body requests input on lists of issues, others don't. Some reveal the identity of the lead committee member who will take overall responsibility for the drafting of the Committee's recommendations and examination of the state report in the public session; others do not reveal the identify of this "country rapporteur." Some committees conduct a rapid fire Q&A session; others take long blocks of time to ask a series of questions that pile up over an hour or two, after which the state is given a large block of time to answer the questions. This has meant that the "look and feel" of the treaty body experience is very different from committee to committee. It is a difficult nut to crack -- since there is a history and a reason why each committee does it the way they do. Trying to harmonize, without losing the individual identities and particularities of each committee's work, has been difficult. One size doesn't fit all. But needless differences should be removed if possible, to make the treaty body system more effective and less mysterious. The Secretariat has prepared a good overview of some of the key differences that still exist between committees (see document HRI/ICM/2010/2 of 10 May 2010) and some of this material was discussed at this year's ICM. The idea of "herding cats" sort of comes to mind when watching how this subject has played out over the last several of years in the treaty body meetings.

• Treaty body reform initiatives are again in the air and came under some discussion at this meeting. The "Dublin Statement on the Process of Strengthening of the United Nations Human Rights Treaty Body System" was issued in November 2009, and was signed by many of the existing and prior treaty body members. It seems clear that there will be a number of different conferences and discussions over the next year or two on the subject of treaty body reform. I know NGOs are planning to produce a collaborative document commenting on the Dublin Statement and suggesting reform initiatives that would improve the treaty body system from the point of view of the victims and intended beneficiaries of the system. The Dublin Statement was not compiled as an official UN document, but was organized by the University of Nottingham's Human Rights Law Centre. It's a good initiative and will hopefully give all stakeholders an opportunity to reflect and discuss the subject of reform, with the hope of accomplishing something constructive from the process.

I intend to spend some time posting some comments and brainstorming ideas on treaty body reform at this blog from time to time over the next several months. I hope others will feel free to comment and/or to send me links to your blogs on the same topic so we can have a lively discussion.

Penny Parker

Human rights treaty committees meeting Nov 30 to Dec 2

I'll be attending the next session of the UN ICM -- the United Nations human rights inter committee meeting, scheduled for November 30 to December 2, 2009 in Geneva. This is the meeting of the various human rights treaty committees, to coordinate and support each other's work. NGOs are invited to attend and offer comments. I'll be attending on behalf of my NGO, The Advocates for Human Rights. The treaty bodies are becoming more and more successful in tackling their workloads and coordinating their procedures, but much improvement is still needed to make the system truly effective in the protection and promotion of human rights.

Stay tuned for a discussion of this session's ICM agenda, and daily updates while I'm at the session. I'll be blogging regularly for the next several days in my coverage of this event.

The US human rights treaty ratification record

The US has been visible in an unfortunate way in the human rights treaty system by its failure to ratify most of the core human rights treaties. Presently it is a party only to:

• the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ratified in 1992)


• the Convention against Torture (ratified in 1994)


• the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racism (ratified in 1994)

The US has also ratified in 2002 the 2 optional protocols to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, but not the main Convention itself. The 2 protocols are on the prohibition of child soldiers and the prevention of the sale, prostitution, pornography or trafficking of children.

Now comes the Obama Administration which has apparently signalled a willingness to put forward two additional ratifications to the US Senate -- the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the newest treaty, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Both committees noted this development in their general remarks at this Inter-Committee meeting and urged the US government to initiate ratification efforts as soon as possible. It would appear from the remarks made by both Chairpersons that each Committee has been in communication with the Obama Administration on this topic.

It would be nice to see the US join the human rights treaty system in this manner, by adding two more ratificaitons, but why stop there? The other human rights treaties to which the US is not yet a party include:

• the International Covenant on Economic, Social & Cultural Rights (entered into force in 1976, now ratified by 160 countries)


• the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (entered into force in 1981, now ratified by 186 countries)


• the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of all Migrant Workers and Members of their Families (entered into force in 2003, now ratified by 41 countries)


• the International Convention for the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance (this treaty has not yet entered into force; it requires 20 ratifications and only has 10 so far)

Penny Parker

The Liberian National Human Rights Commission

National human rights commissions, or "NHRIs", are becoming increasingly important to the human rights procedures. This year the Inter Committee meeting of human rights treaty bodies dedicated a portion of its agenda to discussing this phenomenon.

Mr. Gianni Magazzeni, the UN Coordinator for its National Institutions Unit, presented a statement and fielded questions. Several other NHRI spokespersons also participated. According to Mr. Magazzeni, 82 of the 112 country situations reviewed by the UN treaty body system in 2008 had local NHRIs. About 50%, 39 NHRIs, participated in some portion of their country's review process, and this trend is growing.

The primary problem with NHRIs is that they can either be "puppets", unduly influenced by the government regime in which they are established, or they can be true champions of human rights, and it is sometimes difficult to tell which is which. It all depends on the independence, impartiality and expertise of the members of the NHRI, including the independence of their funding. To try to identify which NHRIs are which, there is an accreditation process organized by the International Coordinating Committee of NHRIs. There are also a set of guidelines, known as the Paris Principles, which help to identify the key attributes of an NHRI which is truly independent and impartial.

I made a presentation during this general discussion of NHRIs and pointed to the new, emerging developments in Liberia where it has been decided that an NHRI will be established, but it is not clear yet what level of independence and funding sources will be available. Liberia will be appearing before the Committee on Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) this summer. I encouraged the Committee members present to raise this topic with the government delegation from Liberia when they appear before CEDAW, including the assurances the government is implementing to protect and preserve the independence and sustainability of the NHRI.

The specific date that the Liberia report will be considered in CEDAW has not yet been established, but the Committee session will run from July 20th to August 7th in New York.

Penny Parker

States react

It's always a little tense when the treaty body members have a session with the states parties. The states elect the treaty body members, ask them to be impartial and independent, and then bristle when those same treaty body members offer criticisms and recommendations for how the state could improve its human rights conditions. The session on Tuesday was no exception.

Of the 57 state delegations that attended, 34 have a report being reviewed by one or more of the 9 human rights treaty bodies during 2009. In addition, 38 of the 57 countries have experts elected to one or more treaty bodies from their own country. In fact only 10 of the state delegations who attended the Tuesday session had neither -- no report coming up before a committee in 2009 and no expert on any committee.

Some states were quick to complement the treaty bodies and underscore the importance of the treaty body system to the promotion and protection of human rights. But many states were critical of particular practices. Some of the criticisms included the following:

• It was felt by some that the treaty bodies tend to drift outside of their mandate and comment on political issues, or on human rights conditions not relevant to the particular treaty under which they serve
• Several states commented on the burden of preparing state reports, the conflicting requirements and practices from the different treaty bodies, and the difficulties to prepare for a presentation to a treaty body when each treaty body was very different in its procedures and expectations. There has been an effort in recent years by the treaty bodies to harmonize their practices so that the look and feel of each treaty body experience is more consistent. But several states and treaty body members acknowledged that this harmonization effort needs to continue.
• Several states were particularly critical of the treaty bodies willingness to hear testimony and consider documentation from NGOs, particularly when this information was contrary to the state's own testimony and documentation. This is a common criticism heard each year and of course is more prevalent among states who have serious human rights problems.
• Several states were also critical of the practice by some treaty bodies to review state conditions in countries who have failed to file a report. This "in absentia" review was viewed as unfair and unsuitable. This issue is another that comes up each year. The problem faced by the treaty bodies is that they are tasked with reviewing state compliance to the treaty, but some states have never filed a report from which such a review can be made. Other states have failed to file reports for many years. On average, reports are due every 4 or 5 years, but some states haven't filed a report with the treaty body for over 30 years. Some treaty bodies have now adopted a practice of reminding states by letter if they haven't filed for over 10 years, and then stepping up the pressure with further reminders, personal visits, and other efforts to escalate the communications, to try to incentivize the state to file its report. Finally, if all efforts to get the country to respond have failed, the committee then schedules the country for review in the absence of a report. It is this final step that several state delegations were critical of in the Tuesday session.
• There was also a spirited debate and clash of viewpoints between the delegation of Egypt and the Committee Against Torture (CAT), regarding the recent review of the compliance report of Israel before CAT. The representative from the Egyptian delegation was especially critical of the committee's final conclusions and observations, feeling that the committee had taken too many statements of the Israeli delegation at face value and had failed to challenge them. Both the Egyptian delegation and members of the CAT were quoting from the final CAT report to make their points.
• Some of the other comments and suggestions from states were better time management of sessions, better advance notice of issues and topics to be discussed in the state review session, better transparency of information that the committee is relying upon, and more efforts to remove backlogs and speed up proceedings.

All in all, it is remarkable to realize that the system works at all. States have essentially given up a little bit of their sovereignty by ratifying human rights treaties which authorize the committee established under the treaty to poke around into their domestic affairs and criticize their practices. Yet after nearly 40 years of human rights treaties in operation, we are approaching universal ratification of the human rights treaties by all of the countries in the world. All countries in the world have ratified at least 1 of the 9 human rights treaties. Some treaties, such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women, are nearing 100% ratification.

Here are the ratification records of each of the major treaties:

• International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination -- 173 states (89%)
• International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights -- 163 states (84%)
• International Covenant on Economic, Social & Cultural Rights -- 160 states (82%)
• Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women -- 186 states (95%)
• Convention Against Torture -- 146 states (75%)
• Convention on the Rights of the Child -- 193 states (99%)
• International Convention on the Rights of Migrant Workers and Their Families -- 41 states (21%)
• Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities -- 58 states (30%)
• Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (which establishes the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture) -- 47 states (32%)

Penny Parker