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This chapter focuses on the United Nations human rights treaty bodies and the way in which they deal with reservations under the reporting procedure. It begins with a section on general aspects of the reservations regime and the validity of reservations to human rights treaties. It then considers the ‘object and purpose’ rule, paying specific attention to general human rights treaties. The chapter also deals with various types of reservations that (potentially) affect the implementation of the entire treaty. It then addresses reservations to norms that have a special status, such as peremptory norms and non-derogable norms. The concluding sections discuss the reservations affecting the role of monitoring bodies and the competence of the monitoring bodies to examine reservations and determine their validity, as well as the consequences of their findings.

This chapter discusses the relationship between human rights and state responsibility, based on the fundamental proposition that a breach of conventional or customary human rights or humanitarian norms leads to the international responsibility of states. The chapter aims to examine the relationship between the contemporary and the rapidly developing law of human rights and humanitarian norms and the law of state responsibility. This examination should contribute to the acceptance of human rights as an authentic and legitimate branch of international law. The discussion in the chapter happens to be largely theoretical.

This chapter focuses on the extent to which Asian states participate in the general UN human rights machinery. It begins by outlining the positions of Asian states with regards to human rights then discusses the notion of the so-called ‘Asian Values’ debate. This is followed by an examination of Asian states' participation in the human rights treaty and charter-based regime. The final section seeks to undertake a brief survey of the Asian states that have reported on minority rights issues, drawing on the state reports submitted to the UN Human Rights Committee (HRC) and Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD).

This chapter discusses the relationship between the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT) and human rights treaties. It identifies alternative approaches in the issue and discusses their relative strengths and weaknesses. The positivist approach, the dogmatic approach, and the fragmentation approach to the relationship between the VCLT and human rights treaties were rejected. Instead, the chapter expresses sympathy for the two remaining approaches, namely the constitutional and the reconciliation approaches.

This chapter on reservations to human rights has its place in a volume devoted to the evolution of international law from bilateralism to community interest. It could even be said that it is at the very heart of the dialectic called by these two trends: on the one hand, reservations, in a way, ‘bilateralize’ the relations between the parties to multilateral treaties while, at the same time, facilitating a wider acceptance of the core elements of the treaties in question and, therefore, strengthening the global community interest. This dialectic is vividly present with regard to human rights treaties even though, according to a dominant view among human rights activists, reservations to those treaties are seen as an absolute evil. They are not.

The seven principal United Nations-sponsored human rights treaties stipulate that states parties submit periodic reports to the respective treaty monitoring bodies on their implementation of the treaty obligations. Following a report review, the treaty body in question issues a set of ‘Concluding Observations’ containing its collective assessment of the state's record and recommendations for enhanced implementation of the rights in question. This chapter analyzes the weaknesses of the current system of uncoordinated recommendations between the seven UN treaty bodies, and highlights the need for integration of the recommendations. Failure to do so could give rise to ‘clashes of approach’ and cases of ‘inconsistent or contradictory recommendations’. Integration of the approaches of the treaty bodies based on a human rights-based approach can enhance the structure and fulfilment of the obligations under the main human rights treaties, including the ICESCR, as well as the work of the respective Committees, including the ESCR Committee.

This chapter focuses upon the legal implementation of the right to life, within both domestic and international legal systems. It identifies the diverse range of circumstances which may give rise to a right to life claim and presents some of the difficulties faced by states and international organs in seeking to implement the right. This chapter addresses the crucial practical question of whether, and if so how, the right to life can be enforced in a world where the loss of life is so commonplace. It is recognized that the most effective means of protecting the right to life will be by means of domestic law, including by means of the core requirement of a criminal prohibition of killing. However, it is at a domestic level in which the threat to human life usually arises and so international oversight, by both legal and non-legal mechanisms, is essential.

This chapter examines practice under the European Convention on Human Rights and under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It shows that practice under the European Convention on Human Rights with regard to the former Czechoslovakia provides ample support for the doctrine of automatic state succession in respect of human rights treaties. It also shows that the supervisory body of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights has devoted most attention to the questions of principle raised by a succession of states.

The interpretation of human rights treaties is widely believed to be subject to special rules, deviating from generally accepted interpretative canons of international law. The view is most clearly expressed by the European Court of Human Rights, which claims that in interpreting the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) ‘regard must be had to its special character as a treaty for the collective enforcement of human rights and fundamental freedoms’. This chapter argues that the Court's method of interpretation is firmly rooted within the traditional canons of interpretation of general international law, and that the method of subsidiary review does not deviate substantially from generally accepted methods of review in international law. It suggests that general principles of treaty interpretation have had — and continue to have — tremendous impact on human rights law, whereas human rights law has not had much of an impact on general international law on the methodological plane, although the substance of human rights law — alongside all other branches of international law — will of course be part of the general body of international law.

The Vienna Convention's regime on reservations is particularly unfit to cope with the specific characteristics of human rights treaties due to the very limited and particular role played by reciprocity and the ‘inward-targeted’ nature of the obligations stipulated in such instruments. Regional human rights courts and UN human rights treaty bodies have developed certain methods of monitoring the reservations practice of states parties to the respective instruments, but a central question has hitherto remained very controversial, namely that of the legal consequences of a reservation to a human rights treaty which is considered incompatible with that treaty's object and purpose and therefore impermissible. After many years of dealing with the topic of reservations, the UN International Law Commission has finally addressed this issue: Special Rapporteur Alain Pellet has proposed a solution which finds itself essentially in accord with the ‘severability’ doctrine advocated by the human rights community, reconciling this approach and the principle of treaty consent through the introduction of a presumption of severability of an invalid reservation from the body of a human rights treaty, to which the State making such a reservation will then remain bound in full. This chapter supports the Special Rapporteur's proposal, traces its development, and discusses both the advantages and the specific challenges posed by a presumption of severability.

This chapter investigates the human origins of the idea that human life has an inherent value. The concept has religious and philosophical roots and serves as the underlying principle for the modern day right to life. We see its development from a religious belief in the sanctity of human life, through philosophical musings about why human life is valuable and whether individuals enjoy certain rights by virtue of their humanity, to the gradual development of a right to life in international law. It is discovered that a concept of the sanctity of human life is not specific to any single human culture. The universally recognized value in human life, when combined with a natural law philosophy and widespread moral revulsion at the disregard for human life during the Holocaust, cemented itself into a legally recognized international human right to life in the mid twentieth century.

Clauses guaranteeing investor ‘full protection and security’ are included in most bilateral and multilateral investment treaties. They require not only abstention by the host State from physically damaging foreign investment, but also positive measures to protect foreign investment, in particular against harm caused by private actors. This chapter shows the importance of and need for a comparative legal approach in order to understand what a guarantee of ‘full protection and security’ means today, in customary international law, but also in bilateral and multilateral investment treaties. It starts with an analysis of the origins of the clauses in customary international law and its importance for the understanding of their content under investment treaties, before analysing investment law jurisprudence on this basis. The applicable standard of protection in investment treaties is clarified in comparative perspective, in particular as regards human rights protection systems, with a view to developing general principles of law.

This chapter discusses the position of corporations in international treaties appertaining to human rights and international criminal law, and the extent to which such instruments serve as the fountainhead of obligations directly binding upon corporations under positive international law. It concludes that international human rights and criminal agreements fall short of directly regulating corporate conduct. However, this does not mean that they disregard corporate conduct altogether. Both under international human rights and criminal law, States assume obligations to regulate corporate conduct, albeit via the medium of domestic law.

This chapter discusses several efforts to use indicators within the law of international human rights. It identifies the criticisms made to these efforts, and states that there is an increasing potential for suitable tempered indicators to play valuable roles. It then takes a look at the project of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, which is aimed to create internationally-prescribed indicators for a number of primary UN human rights treaties. It determines that these indicators may help in addressing the concerns of the perceived legitimacy of the supervisory committees under these treaties. This chapter also suggests that indicators may play a role in assisting peoples and publics to use the kinds of pressures and constraints on governments that human rights advocates have long sought after.

This chapter addresses cultural pluralism in international human rights law by analysing reservations to human rights treaties. Some have argued that reservations are a legitimate and desirable means of accounting for cultural and religious diversity across the world. Others have expressed concern about reservations, in particular those referring to cultural diversity, as they would undermine the universality of human rights and should not be allowed as being against the object and purpose of the treaty. This chapter elaborates on the questions to what extent the instrument of reservations is used by states to express cultural pluralism between and among them and how other states and international supervisory bodies have reacted to such reservations, including to what extent such reservations are accepted as a reflection of cultural pluralism. The treaty selected for this examination is the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). The CEDAW is almost universally ratified by states, but it also has a large number of reservations, which often refer to cultural or religious arguments as justification.

It is generally agreed that human rights treaties have a special character distinguishing them from other treaties. The decisive difference is usually based on the argument that in the context of human rights treaties the principle of reciprocity is not working at all, or at least not in the same way as for other treaties, essentially influencing neither the establishment nor the performance of a human rights treaty. While the problem has been widely discussed under the aspects of reservations, succession, and reprisals, it has rarely been dealt with from the viewpoint of a unilateral termination by denunciation or withdrawal. This chapter focuses on this issue.

This chapter assesses the role of human rights treaty bodies in monitoring, interpreting, and adjudicating health-related human rights obligations, facilitating accountability for the realization of human rights in health policy. With each core human rights treaty having its own corresponding human rights treaty body, these international institutions influence states and galvanize advocates to take action to realize human rights across a range of global health issues. Describing treaty body efforts to monitor state implementation, interpret human rights, and adjudicate individual complaints, this chapter examines the evolving composition and functions of these treaty bodies and analyzes their effectiveness in facilitating the implementation of human rights as a basis for global health. Given recent United Nations efforts to strengthen treaty body functions and streamline monitoring processes, treaty bodies provide complementary approaches for public health practitioners to support accountability for the implementation of health-related human rights.

Common belief is that international human rights treaties have little to no influence on human rights practices. Yet decisions to comply with rights obligations are directly tied to conflicts with civilians over policies; compliance with international human rights law is a function of contention. To know whether and when human rights treaties will effectively constrain government repression, we must understand the context of dissent faced by the government. Most scholars studying human rights treaties focus on the extent to which authorities have the opportunity to repress. Yet, as with any potential legal violation, opportunity without the motive to misbehave yields no crime. Popular challenges and the threat they represent to a government's hold on policies and power constitute the state's primary motive to repress. To determine whether international human rights treaties can meaningfully influence a government's human rights behaviors, we first consider the incentives that motivate leaders to repress.