Executive Summary

The human rights treaties are at the core of the international system for the promotion and protection of human rights.Every UN member state is a party to one or more of the six major human rights treaties.80% of states have ratified four or more.It is a universal human rights legal system which applies to virtually every child, woman or man in the world -over six billion people.Yet human rights violations are rampant.The need is to make the human rights treaties effective in the lives of everyday people.The problem is that the implementation scheme accompanying the core human rights standards was drafted during a period of history when effective international monitoring was neither intended nor achievable.Participation in the treaty system has expanded enormously in terms of ratifications, acceptance of individual communication procedures, the numbers of reports produced and considered, the individual cases decided, as well as the meeting time of six different treaty bodies.This participation and the assumption of legal obligations by states has been voluntary.The treaty rights generate corresponding legal duties upon state actors, to protect against, prevent, and remedy human rights violations.The treaty system definitively establishes the limitations on sovereignty, the validity of international supervision and accountability.The treaty standards are the benchmark for assessment and concern.Furthermore, at the national level a multitude of domestic legal and political systems have been positively affected by the treaties.Nevertheless, the gap between universal right and remedy has become inescapable and inexcusable, threatening the integrity of the international human rights legal regime.There are overwhelming numbers of overdue reports, untenable backlogs, minimal individual complaints from vast numbers of potential victims, and widespread refusal of states to provide remedies when violations of individual rights are found.The post of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights was constituted decades after most of the human rights treaties were adopted.Treaty body after treaty body was created, without a relationship to a High Commissioner, and without a relationship to each other.The result has been a burgeoning reporting burden, duplication of procedures, little effort to synchronize substantive outcomes, and rudimentary follow-up processes and responsibilities.In the meantime, treaty body members have struggled to preserve their independent expert status in a highly politicized UN environment, which has populated their numbers with many government surrogates and grossly underfinanced their work.xv

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