This publication reproduces the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the nine core international human rights treaties and their optional protocols in a user-friendly format to make them more accessible, in particular to government officials, civil society, human rights defenders, legal practitioners, scholars, individual citizens and others with an interest in human rights norms and standards.
This book has a simple objective: to present the fundamentals of international human rights treaty law in a way that can be helpful to the national leader, official, or legal adviser whose duty it is to help put a human rights treaty regime into the law and practice in his or her country. It is a book of international law, as provided for in the principal international and regional human rights treaties and draws upon the jurisprudence and practice of their monitoring organs.
The UN Human Rights Treaty System: Law and Procedure examines the core UN human rights treaties that form the framework of international human rights law. This book describes the development of each treaty, along with the substantive rights enshrined in them, and analyses the nature and functions of their respective monitoring bodies. Topics discussed include periodic reporting procedures, investigative procedures and individual complaint procedures, with supporting case law analysed in great detail. This practical and indispensable reference resource: - Guides you through the structure of each of the core UN human rights treaties, explaining both the substance of the rights and the various procedures which may be drawn upon to implement those rights - Explains in detail how each of these procedures may be accessed, as well as critiquing their operation in practice - Covers a wide number of areas including civil and political rights generally, racial and gender-based discrimination and the prohibition against torture - Discusses proposals for reform of the UN human rights treaty monitoring system and the implications of these reforms The UN Human Rights Treaty System: Law and Procedure has been written for practitioners and students of human rights law in the UK, Ireland and abroad. Government bodies, non-governmental organisations, national human rights institutions and charities will also find this a great resource.
This volume introduces law students to the international legal instruments and case law governing the substantive and procedural dimensions of international human rights and humanitarian law, including economic, social, and cultural rights. It also discusses the history and organizational structure of human rights and humanitarian law enforcement mechanisms. Relevant to U.S. audiences, a chapter is devoted to the issues surrounding the incorporation of international law into U.S. law, including principles of constitutional and statutory interpretation, conflict rules, and the self-execution doctrine. Questions & Comments sections provide critical analyses of issues raised in the materials.
There has always been some discomfort about reservations in relation to international obligations of States applicable to individuals. This apprehension was once again brought to the forefront of the international normative process with General Comment No. 24 of the Human Rights Committee and the work of the International Law Commission on reservations to treaties. This book is a contribution to the debate on reservations to human rights treaties. Several key questions are addressed. Can the reservations' regime, as codified in the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, adequately address human rights relationships? Is there a danger of further fragmentation of international law if human rights treaties were to be treated differently as concerns the reservations'regime applicable to these treaties? Should the distinction be made between the validity of a reservation and the effects of a reservation found to be invalid? These and other questions continue to generate a variety of answers.
Do international human rights treaties constrain governments from repressing their populations and violating rights? In Contentious Compliance, Courtenay R. Conrad and Emily Hencken Ritter present a new theory of human rights treaty effects founded on the idea that governments repress as part of a domestic conflict with potential or actual dissidents. By introducing dissent like peaceful protests, strikes, boycotts, or direct violent attacks on government, their theory improves understanding of when states will violate rights-and when international laws will work to protect people. Conrad and Ritter investigate the effect of international human rights treaties on domestic conflict and ultimately find that treaties improve human rights outcomes by altering the structure of conflict between political authorities and potential dissidents. A powerful, careful, and empirically sophisticated rejoinder to the critics of international human rights law, Contentious Compliance offers new insights and analyses that will reshape our thinking on law and political violence.
In this study titled The Core Human Rights Treaties and Thailand, Vitit Muntarbhorn examines the relationship between Thailand and the nine key human rights Conventions, known as the Core Human Rights Treaties, in addition to their Protocols. These agreements cover a range of civil, political, economic, social and cultural issues, in addition to the rights of specific groups. The study offers a mirror for reflection, testing the linkage between international standards and national implementation in a dynamic and challenging context.
The six main United Nations human rights treaties enjoy almost universal ratification today. Almost 80 per cent of the possible ratifications have been made, and every Member State of the UN has ratified at least one of these treaties. The nearly universal acceptance of the treaties on the formal level, however, does not automatically translate into the norms contained in these documents being made a reality in the lives of the billions of people living in these countries. The treaty system is notoriously weak in terms of international enforcement, and there is a general suspicion that it has had little impact at the domestic level. Mechanisms to improve the international enforcement mechanisms of the six main treaties have been a topic of discussion and research for many years, but the domestic impact of the treaties has never been investigated in a systematic and comprehensive manner. This book constitutes the most ambitious attempt so far to establish the impact of the treaties at the domestic level. The following treaties in 20 United Nations Member States are investigated: the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, the Convention Against Torture, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. This book reflects the findings of 20 researchers, based in the countries investigated, under the leadership of Professors Christof Heyns and Frans Viljoen of the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, in a study done in co-operation with the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. The influence of the treaties in each of the 20 countries is investigated in respect of its influence on the continuation, legislation, court cases, policies and practices, and the impact of the treaty system in civil society. In an overview chapter by the study leaders based on a comparison of the available data, common trends and patterns are identified, and recommendations about reforms on the national and international level are made. This is a book that should be read by all those interested in the development of the international human rights system.
Every state in the world has undertaken human rights obligations on the basis of UN treaties. Today's challenge is to enhance the effectiveness of procedures and institutions established to promote the accountability of governments. The six treaty bodies that monitor and evaluate state policies and practices play a vital role, but the whole system has been stretched almost to breaking point. It is under-funded, many governments fail to report or do so very late or superficially, there is a growing backlog of individual complaints, broad reservations have been lodged by many states, and the expertise of committee members has been questioned. This volume contains detailed analyses of the strengths and weaknesses of the system, written by leading participants in the work of the treaty bodies. Their recommendations provide a blueprint for far-reaching reform of a system of major importance for the future of international efforts to protect human rights.
