Final Report on The UN Human Rights Committee and other Human Rights Treaty Bodies

Abstract

This report addresses the questions put by the Co-Rapporteurs, mainly in relation to the UN Human Rights Committee (HRCttee) established pursuant to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). When useful the jurisprudence of other UN human rights treaty bodies (UN treaty bodies) is also examined, in order to reinforce the findings emerging from the jurisprudence of the HRCttee or to underline any potential divergences in the practice of these bodies. The HRCttee (like the other UN treaty bodies) is a treaty-monitoring body, which performs three main functions: a) it conducts a periodic state reporting procedure and formulates concluding observations on state reports; b) it develops/adopts General Comments by which specific rights or cross-cutting issues are examined in a comprehensive way and presented as a formal (re)statement of the Committee’s considered understanding of the rights or issues in question; c) it hears ‘communications’ by individuals about alleged violations of their rights by a State Party and adopts ‘views’ determining whether or not an individual’s rights were violated in a specific case. Through these functions, which are to a large extent similar in all the UN human rights treaty bodies, these bodies play a role both in interpreting the normative content of the respective instruments and in giving concrete meaning to individual rights and state obligations. In all of its functions, the HRCttee interprets the Covenant. Rules of interpretation are relevant firstly, when the Committee renders views on an individual communication. Rules of interpretation are also relevant in the General Comments, where the HRCttee “distils its considered views on an issue which arises out of the provisions of the treaty whose implementation it supervises and presents those views in the context of a formal statement of its understanding to which it attaches major importance”. Notwithstanding the importance of General Comments in the interpretation of the Covenant, this paper focuses on “judicial interpretation” by the HRCttee and other UN treaty bodies. The ICCPR’s provisions are mainly interpreted in views rendered on individual communications, where the Committee acts as a quasi-judicial organ. The HRCttee has developed an important body of jurisprudence defining specific rights and obligations of states in concrete situations, reaching findings of breach or non-breach of Covenant provisions by the State concerned and recommending an appropriate remedy.