A new law review article by Professor Michael O’Flaherty, rapporteur of the Yogyakarta Principles, calls for the melding of all UN human rights treaty-monitoring bodies into something like a single entity. He calls for the adoption of this reform without the required consent of the Member States that are parties to those treaties.
O’Flaherty’s article, which appears in the June issue of the Human Rights Law Review focuses on the Dublin Statement, a document that resulted from a private, invitation-only meeting in Dublin in November 2009, that was signed by 35 current and former members of United Nations (UN) treaty bodies, though in their private capacities.
The treaty bodies are committees tasked with overseeing Member States’ compliance with human rights treaties. As only States Parties collectively have the authority to amend or interpret provisions of a treaty, actions or recommendations by treaty bodies are non-binding and considered strictly advisory. Any significant changes to the treaty body system would be tantamount to amending existing human rights treaties.
Paragraph 16 of the Dublin Statement seems to recognize this reality but tries to circumvent it nonetheless, “Reform that may require the amendment of treaties should be embarked upon only if the goals sought to be achieved cannot be attained by any other means …”
Further, the Dublin Statement calls on the powerful UN agencies to use their political and financial clout to enforce the non-binding recommendations of treaty bodies on the domestic level. “It is recommended that such UN entities as UNDP [UN Development Program], UNICEF [UN Children’s Fund], UNIFEM [UN Development Fund for Women] and other funds and programmes seek to further prioritise (sic) support for the treaty body system and the implementation of its recommendations at the national level, including through delivery of capacity building for States and NGOs, training for law enforcement officers etc.”
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Navanethem Pillay, encouraged the group and their initiative with a bold call for synergy between the human rights bodies. “I propose,” she said, “that once a specific issue has been identified as central to the improvement of the human rights situation in a given country, this issue should then be taken up by all human rights mechanisms.” Such a model would allow for a treaty body to confront a state on a “central” issue, even if that issue was only contained in treaties that the state had never ratified.
Last week in a UN briefing for non-governmental organizations, staff of the OHCHR referred numerous times to the Dublin Statement and noted that the OHCHR had to back away from previous attempts to have a unified treaty body system because of the opposition of Member States.
According to O’Flaherty’s article, the draft Dublin Statement was circulated to all members of human rights treaty bodies for their comments and signatures. Despite this, only 30 of the 145 (21 %) of the treaty body members signed onto the statement.
