Call for Papers: International Human Rights Courts and Bodies at the Edge of the Climate Tipping Point

The Centre for Fundamental Rights at the Hertie School, the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the LSE, the University of Stirling and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU have issued a call for papers for a workshop on "International Human Rights Courts and Bodies at the Edge of the Climate Tipping Point," to take place June 9-11, 2021. The call is here.

Vleugel: Culture in the State Reporting Procedure of the UN Human Rights Treaty Bodies

Vincent Vleugel has published Culture in the State Reporting Procedure of the UN Human Rights Treaty Bodies (Intersentia 2020). Here's the abstract:

Ever since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 there has been a debate on the issue of universality and cultural diversity. Nowadays, this debate is not so much framed in terms of opposites, but more in terms of reconciliation.

Under the international human rights framework, States are allowed to take cultural particularities into account when implementing the treaties. The UN human rights treaty bodies which monitor the implementation of the treaties by States have an important role to play in ensuring a proper balance between safeguarding the universality of the rights, while at the same time leaving room for cultural particularities in the interpretation and implementation of those rights by States. This book examines how the UN treaty bodies, in particular the Human Rights Committee, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, fulfil this role.

The research shows that human rights are used as a sword to protect and safeguard culture and cultural diversity, and as a shield to protect against harmful aspects of culture. It also looks in-depth at the dialogue between treaty bodies and States parties, and the way cultural arguments are dealt with. The study concludes that the treaty bodies are first and foremost guardians of the universality of human rights. They use their monitoring role not so much (actively) to reconcile universality and cultural diversity or to accommodate cultural variation, but more to determine the limits of such cultural variation.

Helfer: Pushback Against Supervisory Systems: Lessons for the ILO from International Human Rights Institutions

Laurence R. Helfer (Duke Univ. - Law) has posted Pushback Against Supervisory Systems: Lessons for the ILO from International Human Rights Institutions. Here's the abstract:

The ILO supervisory system, which has reviewed compliance with international labor standards for nearly all of the organization’s 100-year history, is widely hailed as cornerstone of its institutional architecture. In 2012, however, the employer representatives challenged the longstanding position of ILO expert bodies that Convention No. 87 on freedom of association implicitly protects the right to strike. The resulting “crisis of tripartism” has raised questions about the proper interpretation of international labor law and the future competences of ILO monitoring mechanisms.

This chapter, a contribution to a forthcoming edited volume on the centenary of the ILO, offers a wider perspective on these events. It begins by analyzing how states and non-state actors have pushed back against the treaty monitoring bodies created by UN human rights conventions. The chapter then compares the similarities and differences between pushback against human rights treaty bodies and challenges to ILO expert committees over the right to strike. The chapter concludes by highlighting ongoing UN and ILO initiatives aimed at strengthening international supervisory systems.

von Staden: Monitoring Second-Order Compliance: The Follow-Up Procedures of the UN Human Rights Treaty Bodies

Andreas von Staden (Univ. of Hamburg - Political Science) has posted Monitoring Second-Order Compliance: The Follow-Up Procedures of the UN Human Rights Treaty Bodies (Czech Yearbook of International Law, forthcoming). Here's the abstract: A key question concerning the role and relevance of international organizations is the extent to which their rules and decisions are being complied with and how effective they are in resolving the problems for the solution of which they were ostensibly created. This also applies to Dispute settlement mechanisms whose raison d’être is to clarify the boundaries of permissible behaviour within applicable international law and, ideally, to trigger remedial action when these boundaries have been overstepped. Yet formally institutionalized mechanisms to monitor second-order compliance with judgments and decisions of judicial and quasi-judicial decision-making bodies remain a rarity in the designs of dispute settlement mechanisms. Where these are lacking in their constitutive instruments, some dispute-settlement bodies have developed mechanisms to monitor and assess second-order compliance of their own. This article explores the follow-up procedures of the UN human rights treaty bodies with a focus on the compliance standards employed by them. While these procedures by themselves will not suffice to resolve the compliance challenges that the treaty bodies face, they may contribute to enforcement by enabling more targeted naming and shaming by interested stakeholders and NGOs.

Ulfstein: The Human Rights Treaty Bodies and Legitimacy Challenges

Geir Ulfstein (Univ. of Oslo - Law) has posted The Human Rights Treaty Bodies and Legitimacy Challenges (in Legitimacy and International Courts, Nienke Grossman, Harlan Grant Cohen, Andreas Follesdal & Geir Ulfstein eds., forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

The United Nations human rights treaty bodies, such as the Human Rights Committee, the Committee Against Torture, and the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, oversee national implementation of international human rights obligations. This chapter discusses the legitimacy of the human rights treaty bodies’ court-like function of deciding cases on individual complaints.

Shany: International Human Rights Bodies and the Little-Realized Threat of Fragmentation

Yuval Shany (Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem - Law) has posted International Human Rights Bodies and the Little-Realized Threat of Fragmentation. Here's the abstract:

This note discusses the coordination problems encountered by international human rights bodies, who apply comparable legal standards emanating from separate treaties, and confront significant challenges of procedural coordination and normative harmonization. Particular attention will be given in this regard to the policy considerations invoked by such bodies.

The discussion comprises two parts: First, I will discuss the doctrinal tools and theoretical constructs which international human rights bodies have been using in order to mitigate normative clashes with other such bodies. Such tools and constructs may explain the ability of human rights adjudicators to resist normative fragmentation. The second part of this note will address the policy considerations that may explain some of the reasons why international human rights bodies may choose to issue certain decisions which would, nonetheless, clash with decisions of other human rights bodies, and why, in most cases, pursuing normative harmony appears to be preferable to normative fragmentation.

Conference: Reforms in UN Treaty Bodies and the European Court of Human Rights: Mutual Lessons? (Reminder)

On February 29-March 1, 2016, PluriCourts - Centre for the Study of the Legitimate Roles of the Judiciary in the Global Order at the University of Oslo Faculty of Law will hold a conference on "Reforms in UN Treaty Bodies and the European Court of Human Rights: Mutual Lessons?" The program is here. Here's the idea:

The UN treaty body reform process started with consultations initiated by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2009. Following the publication of a report by the High Commissioner, the process was concluded in 2014 by a UN General Assembly resolution (A/RES/68/268). The result included additional meeting time for the treaty bodies, harmonization of procedures, increased resources to the treaty body system, and capacity-building to assist member states in their implementation of their international obligations.

As concerns the ECtHR, a reform process has also been going on for several years, guided by the ministerial conferences in Interlaken (2010), Izmir (2011), Brighton (2012) and Brussels (2015). By the end of 2015 the Steering Committee for Human Rights will adopt a report on the long-term future of the convention system.

The conference will discuss these two reforms processes mentioned above focusing on:

1) The procedure of selection of members and judges
2) Potential solutions to the case load situation
3) The quality of reasoning
4) Margin of appreciation and subsidiarity

Conference: Reforms in UN Treaty Bodies and the European Court of Human Rights: Mutual Lessons?

On February 29-March 1, 2016, PluriCourts - Centre for the Study of the Legitimate Roles of the Judiciary in the Global Order at the University of Oslo Faculty of Law will hold a conference on "Reforms in UN Treaty Bodies and the European Court of Human Rights: Mutual Lessons?" Here's the idea:

The UN treaty body reform process started with consultations initiated by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2009. Following the publication of a report by the High Commissioner, the process was concluded in 2014 by a UN General Assembly resolution (A/RES/68/268). The result included additional meeting time for the treaty bodies, harmonization of procedures, increased resources to the treaty body system, and capacity-building to assist member states in their implementation of their international obligations.

As concerns the ECtHR, a reform process has also been going on for several years, guided by the ministerial conferences in Interlaken (2010), Izmir (2011), Brighton (2012) and Brussels (2015). By the end of 2015 the Steering Committee for Human Rights will adopt a report on the long-term future of the convention system.

The conference will discuss these two reforms processes mentioned above focusing on:

1) The procedure of selection of members and judges
2) Potential solutions to the case load situation
3) The quality of reasoning
4) Margin of appreciation and subsidiarity

Kruckenberg: The UNreal world of human rights: An ethnography of the UN Committee in the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

Lena J. Kruckenberg has published The UNreal world of human rights: An ethnography of the UN Committee in the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (Nomos 2012). Here's the abstract:

‘UNreal world’ breathes new life into the ethnography of international law at a time, when transnational actors challenge its traditional principles. The study investigates the multi-actor relations and micro-practices that constitute international human rights monitoring, through an in-depth exploration of the work of the oldest amongst the UN human rights treaty bodies, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD). As the study focuses on the practices of (re)constructing, interpreting, and evaluating human rights in a quasi-judicial and politicised context, it analyses human rights monitoring from an embedded micro-perspective rather than functionalist macro-perspective. The author traces three groups of actors through their experiences of the ‘UN-real world’ of one of CERDs semi-annual sessions: state representatives, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and the members of the Committee. Vivid accounts and detailed analyses illuminate the tacit knowledge and subterranean diplomacy through which international human rights law evolves as a ‘gentle civiliser’ of states.