During my six-year term as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, with responsibility for the UN human rights treaty bodies, I spent much time, throughout my mandate, seeking to strengthen them and consolidate the so-called ‘human rights treaty body system’. The treaty bodies are a pillar of the international human rights protection system. Their system has grown significantly since the establishment of the first treaty body in 1969, enhancing human rights protection. So why did I have to work on the consolidation of these treaty bodies? Because of the many concerns, complaints and misunderstandings that filtered to me from states, civil society organisations and the expert members of these bodies.
Civil society actors complained of exclusion and little or no consultation as well as the lack of implementation of the recommendations. They underlined that the expert members of the Committees were not sufficiently resourced and asked for wider dissemination of their jurisprudence. States objected to disrespectful questioning by what they perceived as unaccountable Committee members and felt that their reporting obligations were too onerous and, most chilling of all, some argued for the disbanding of the treaty body system, indicating that it could be replaced by the then newly established Universal Periodic Review of the Human Rights Council. This would have replaced independent review by experts with a multilateral forum made of states.
It is in this context that the UN General Assembly in 2014 adopted Resolution 68/268, deciding ‘to consider the state of the human rights treaty body system’, notably ‘to ensure their sustainability’. This included a direction to my Office to provide further assistance to states, where it was needed, to comply with the treaty bodies’ findings. Yet, at the time of my departure from office in 2014, I keenly felt that we still did not know enough about how the treaty body system protects and promotes human rights at the domestic level, how it permeates to people through States. We needed better data and a comprehensive study of their impact.
This new publication The Impact of the United Nations Human Rights Treaties on the Domestic Level: Twenty Years On meets exactly this need. And it meets it superbly! Professors Christof Heyns, Frans Viljoen and Rachel Murray assembled a monumental work, covering the impact of nine core United Nations human rights treaties, ten UN treaty bodies and three substantive Protocols over a period of twenty years. This new study picks up from an earlier review of the treaty bodies conducted by Professors Heyns and Viljoen, which had covered the period 1969 to 1999. These two publications together provide an
Sadly, my dear friend Christof Heyns passed away on 28 March 2021, as this study was being finalised. His untimely death threw the human rights world into deep mourning for the loss of this giant who had played an incredible, leading role in the advancement of human rights.
I welcome this study with enthusiasm. It is a substantial and comprehensive report based on country-specific research that reinforces and amplifies the findings that the treaty bodies have had an enormous influence and impact at the domestic level. The publication presents the larger picture and tracks changes in attitude, ideas, perception and understanding of norms and standards espoused by the treaty body system. It addresses cultural or ideological changes in the appreciation of human rights advances.
This publication is an invaluable source for all of us: for spreading awareness among civil society actors and encouraging them to engage more vigorously with the treaty bodies and for states to see the positive benefits of their cooperation with the treaty bodies.
Judge Navi Pillay
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (2008–2014)