The Origins of UN Human Rights Protection

The United Nations was a product of World War 2. As the Allies fought an existential war against the Nazis, a key element of their strategy was seeking to differentiate themselves from the fascist and totalitarian government of Nazi Germany. This is exemplified by the Atlantic Charter of 1941, which was issued by the UK and US leaders in which they outlined “common principles” on which “they base their hopes for a better future of the world”. The Charter contained promises to secure self-determination, social security and the abandonment of the use of force. Later, in 1942, the Declaration by United Nations developed these themes setting out the Allies' war aims which stated:

The protection and preservation of human rights therefore became one of the aims of the Allies. This was meant to give those fighting against the Nazis a greater sense of common purpose. When the United Nations was officially formed after WW2, the victors of the war were much cooler on human rights, viewing it as peripheral to addressing security concerns. However, under pressure from NGOs and smaller nations to live up to the rhetoric of their previous declarations, human rights protection was included among the work of the United Nations. The Charter specifically refers to “promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion” as one of the United Nations’ main purposes. It also committed, in Article 68, to establishing a Commission on Human Rights as well as giving roles to the UN General Assembly and Economic and Social Council in securing human rights protections.

From these inauspicious beginnings the UN assumed its role in protecting and guaranteeing human rights. It is perhaps inaccurate to describe the UN as having a human rights “system”. If it is a system, it is a disjointed and fragmented one in which different bodies and entities within the UN engage with aspects of human rights in discrete ways e.g. the International Labour Organization, UNICEF and the General Assembly. Nonetheless, if the system has any root, it lies in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

UN Declaration of Human Rights

The UN Commission on Human Rights was established in 1946 and began working on “an International Bill of Rights”. Originally, this International Bill of Rights was supposed to have 3 parts – a Declaration, a binding treaty with legal obligations and a system of supervision. In December 1948, the first part, the UN Declaration of Human Rights was adopted. It contained 30 articles with a combination of civil and political and economic, social and cultural rights. As noted in the History chapter, the Declaration was clearly influenced by the constitutional law of different states, particularly the US constitutional documents and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man with references to ‘inherent dignity’ and the ‘equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family’. Eleanor Roosevelt, who was instrumental in the creation of the Declaration, described it as “the international Magna Carta of all men everywhere”.

The plan to create a single, binding UN treaty on human rights ran into difficulty soon after the adoption of the Declaration. In early 1952, the General Assembly instructed the Commission on Human Rights to split the single treaty into two Draft International Covenants on Human Rights, “one to contain civil and political rights and the other to contain economic, social and cultural rights”. The decision to split the rights into two distinct treaties arose from significant ideological differences between different member states of the UN at the time. In general terms, the western, liberal democracies sought to prioritise civil and political rights and downplay the significance of economic, social and cultural rights. Broadly speaking, this group viewed these as more akin to goals to be achieved in the wider context of their market economies than rights that could be asserted against states. The communist countries, by contrast, emphasised economic, social and cultural rights over civil and political rights as a natural extension of their political ideology. The schism that arose has had a lasting impact on international human rights law, with economic, social and cultural rights still seen by many to this day as less important than civil and political rights.

The Great Divide – The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights vs The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

The process of implementing binding human rights obligations in international law became a protracted affair at the UN. The two draft treaties were produced in 1954. The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) drew heavily from Articles 22-27 of the Universal Declaration, focusing on rights to social security, work, health, education and more broadly on standards of living. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) covered a wide range of different subject areas, from the protection of what were traditionally viewed as civil liberties, such as freedom of expression and assembly, to the right to life and the prohibition on torture, inhuman and degrading treatment. Finally, after almost 20 years of negotiations, the two Covenants were adopted for signature in 1966, but did not fully enter into force until 1976. While the divisions between each of the treaties can often be overstated, there were notable differences between them. The following sections consider the differences between each of the treaties in two specific areas – monitoring and justiciability.

Monitoring

The first clear difference between each of the treaties lies in monitoring and oversight. From the outset, the ICCPR envisaged the creation of a treaty body, the Human Rights Committee, charged with monitoring the implementation of the treaty (see Articles 28 and 40 ICCPR). By contrast, the ICESCR did not contain any provision for a monitoring mechanism in its main text. While it was envisaged that states would submit reports to the UN on implementation (see Article 16 ICESCR) these were to be transmitted to the Economic and Social Council of the UN, which formed working groups to review the reports. Eventually, the Economic and Social Council established the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 1985 to carry out the functions assigned to the Economic and Social Council in the treaty, correcting this discrepancy between the treaties.

Justiciability

The economic, social and cultural rights are framed in different terms compared to many of the civil and political rights. If we look at Article 2(1) of the ICESCR, it states

The rights are framed in aspirational terms using “available resources” to “achieve progressively” the realisation of the rights through “appropriate means”. They are characterised by both conditionality and an assumption of deferred realisation. This contrasts with how many civil and political rights are framed. We can see this clearly if we compare the right to social security in the ICESCR with the prohibition on torture in the ICCPR:

When we look at the right to social security, we can see the state “recognises” the right, rather than the individual being entitled directly to it. This can be contrasted with the terms of Article 7, which are individualised (no one), imperative (shall) and impose a clear negative obligation on the state – do not torture people. The ICESCR also does not contain a provision akin to Article 2(3) of the ICCPR requiring states to “develop the possibilities of judicial remedy”. The framing of the rights in this way has led to concerns about the justiciability of economic, social and cultural rights.

Justiciability [see Chapter on Socio-Economic Rights for further discussion] refers to the types of matters that a court can adjudicate upon. Essentially whether the rights could be presented to a court for enforcement by it. The Committee on Economic Social and Cultural Rights has itself acknowledged that economic, social and cultural rights are often viewed as not being justiciable in General Comment No. 9.

The Committee has been at pains to stress that the idea of progressive realisation “should not be misinterpreted as depriving the obligation of all meaningful content”. The framing of the rights in this way was meant to confer flexibility, while also establishing a clear obligation. The Committee has also presented several counter-arguments to the idea that ESC rights are not justiciable. Firstly, it notes in General Comment No. 3 that there are many provisions in the Covenant that are “capable of immediate application by judicial and other organs”. Secondly, the obligation to take steps (in Article 2(1)) is not qualified or limited by other considerations and such steps must be taken “within a reasonably short time after the Covenant’s entry into force”. Thirdly, they note, again in General Comment No. 9 that “there is no Covenant right which could not, in the great majority of systems, be considered to possess at least some significant justiciable dimensions”. Elsewhere in the comment they downplay the significance of judicial remedies noting “administrative remedies will, in many cases, be adequate” to implement the rights in the Covenant.

Ultimately, we should recognise the “great divide” between civil and political rights and economic, social and cultural rights for what it is – the outward manifestation of an ideological clash between capitalism and communism. As the heat of that clash has dissipated with the end of the Cold War, the supposed division has diminished too, knitted back together by appeals to core principles [see discussion in chapter on Core Principles] like interdependence, indivisibility and universality, by the jurisprudence of different courts stressing the parity between the different rights and by the waves of subsequent UN treaties which have blended them together without hesitation. It is to those treaties that we now turn our attention.

Core Human Rights Treaties at a Glance

There are 9 core international human rights treaties, the majority of which also contain additional protocols to establish individual complaints mechanisms to the treaty bodies and to address discrete topics not covered in the main treaty.

1. International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) (1965)
2. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) (1966)
3. International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) (1966)
4. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) (1979)
5. Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (UNCAT) (1984)
6. Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) (1989)
7. International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (ICMW) (1990)
8. International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (CPED) (2006)
9. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) (2006)

Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination

The elimination of racial discrimination is among the fundamental aims of the United Nations. In Article 1 of the UN Charter it states that “The Purposes of the United Nations are […] promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion”. The prohibition on racial discrimination is widely considered customary international law and jus cogens.

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination was the first of the core treaties adopted by the United Nations. It followed a very similar pattern to other treaties with the adoption of a non-binding declaration, the United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, adopted in the first instance in 1963, followed by a binding treaty shortly afterwards in 1965. It is among the most widely ratified of any of the core UN treaties, with 182 state parties. The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination was also the first UN treaty body created to oversee the implementation of a treaty. As Keane points out, it has served as a template for the other treaty bodies that followed after it.

The treaty creates an extremely broad definition of discrimination encompassing “any distinctions, exclusions, restrictions or preferences” based on “race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin”. This broad definition extends protection to ethnic and linguistic minorities, which do not necessarily always correspond to racial divisions. There has been some dispute over the extent to which the treaty protects against discrimination on the grounds of “nationality”. The treaty itself refers to “national origin” rather than “nationality” and further states it does “not apply to distinctions, exclusions, restrictions or preferences made by a State Party to this Convention between citizens and noncitizens”. This has led to some conflicting determinations, with the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination ruling that the Convention does apply to discrimination on the grounds of nationality, while the ICJ held that it does not.

The latter case reflects the somewhat unusual approach the CERD takes to inter-state complaints. The treaty contains a clause (Article 22) allowing parties to submit disputes over the interpretation or application of the treaty to the International Court of Justice for resolution. The divergence in opinion between the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and ICJ on whether CERD prohibits discrimination on the grounds of nationality arose from a case brought by Qatar against the UAE concerning the interpretation of the treaty. CERD is also the only core UN human rights treaty with a mandatory inter-state complaint mechanism, with the others requiring States parties to make an extra declaration recognising the competence of the treaty body to receive their complaints (e.g. Article 41 ICCPR).

The treaty also creates scope for states to introduce measures to redress long term effects of discrimination by taking “special and concrete measures to ensure the adequate development and protection of certain racial groups or individuals belonging to them for the purpose of guaranteeing them the full and equal enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms”. This provision ensures that what is sometimes called “positive discrimination” is not considered to be racial discrimination. The treaty creates a clear legal obligation to implement policies of affirmative action by which the overall goal of effective minority protection can be achieved. The Committee has also followed this up by issuing general recommendations with a view to ensuring greater protection of specific groups such as Roma and indigenous people.

Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women

While the ICCPR (in Article 26) and ICESCR (in Article 2(1)) contain general non-discrimination clauses which prohibit discrimination on the grounds of sex, the work of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women since 1946 revealed the need to address a range of issues of discrimination germane to women across the world. Patriarchal social structures and the subordination of women to men in terms of legal and other rights have continued to hamper the realisation of equality between sexes. Additional treaties were adopted by the UN in the 1950s addressing discrimination in the context of political rights, the acquisition of nationality and marriage, but the need for a more comprehensive treaty to address the many issues was clear. The Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women was adopted in 1979 with the aim of eliminating discrimination against women in all its forms, ensuring equal development and advancement for women and to enable them to enjoy their human rights and fundamental freedoms in the same way that men do. 189 states have ratified the convention at the time of writing (July 2025), placing it among the most widely ratified treaties among the core human rights treaties.

The treaty is perhaps most notable for the way it addresses the issue of equality from multiple perspectives. Fredman argues that securing equality has four dimensions, it should redress disadvantage, counter prejudice based on a protected characteristic, enhance participation and accommodate difference. The provisions in CEDAW address each of these areas. To redress disadvantage, in a similar way to CERD, Article 4 of CEDAW creates scope for affirmative action by allowing states to adopt temporary special measures aimed at accelerating de facto equality between men and women. As the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women noted in General Recommendation No. 25

Article 5 of CEDAW serves both to counter prejudice and accommodate difference. In order to accommodate difference, the structures of society should be modified or transformed and Article 5 requires states to “take all appropriate measures: (a) To modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and women”. The purpose of this is to eliminate prejudice “based on the idea of the inferiority or the superiority of either of the sexes or on stereotyped roles for men and women”. Finally, we can see CEDAW enhance participation of women, creating the opportunity for women to engage in political and social life on the same level as men. Article 7 requires states to take measures to “eliminate discrimination against women in the political and public life” in particular by conferring the right to vote, to participate in the formation of public policy and wider civil society. The Convention also addresses the crucial issue of legal capacity in Article 15. Patriarchal social structures have historically denied women many basic rights, including the right to vote and own property. By requiring states to confer legal capacity on women that is identical to that of men, many of these issues are addressed.

An optional Protocol to the Convention was adopted in 2000. As of July 2025, 114 state parties have ratified it. By ratifying the protocol, state parties recognise the competence of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women to receive and consider communications. In contrast to some other optional protocols (e.g. ICCPR), the optional protocol to CEDAW allows for the submissions of complaints on behalf of individuals or groups, with groups like the Polish Society of Anti-Discrimination Law bringing communications to the committee.

The issue of reservations to CEDAW has been a challenge from the outset. The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women has issued several general recommendations expressing concern about reservations that go against the object and purpose of the Convention (see for example 4, 20 and 21). A substantial number of states have issued reservations to Article 2 of CEDAW, which requires states to condemn and eliminate discrimination against women. Egypt, for example, has declared “The Arab Republic of Egypt is willing to comply with the content of this article, provided that such compliance does not run counter to the Islamic Sharia”. The Committee describes Article 2 as “the very essence of the obligations of States parties under the Convention”. As such, these reservations are contrary to the object and purpose of the Convention and a violation of Article 19 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties and, as stated by the Committee, impermissible under article 28 of CEDAW. CEDAW has also been subject to criticism  for not directly addressing the issue of violence against women and girls. While the UN has sought to rectify this, for example, by issuing the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women and the Committee has confirmed in General Recommendation No. 35 that gender-based violence is a form of discrimination against women and therefore falls within the scope of CEDAW, there have been persistent calls to introduce a binding international treaty on the specific subject.

Convention Against Torture

The UN Convention Against Torture is another landmark human rights law treaty with 175 state parties at time of writing. The prohibition on torture is widely recognised as a jus cogens norm and it cuts across human rights law and the law of armed conflict. The prohibition on torture finds a place in several human rights treaties including Article 7 of the ICCPR, Article 3 of the European Convention and Article 5 of the American Convention on Human Rights. However, torture remains largely ill-defined in them, with the Human Rights Committee, ECtHR and IACtHR all fleshing out the definition over time. The UNCAT provides a definition of the term in Article 1, though it has some shortcomings. There are four elements to it -

1. an act inflicting severe pain or suffering (this can be physical or mental)
2. the element of intent
3. the specific purpose
4. the involvement of a State official, at least by acquiescence.

Zach identifies two key things that distinguish torture from other forms of ill treatment. First, the existence of a purpose behind the infliction of suffering and second, the powerlessness of the victim. The treaty offers an indicative, but non-exhaustive list of purposes for which torture might be inflicted including extracting a confession, punishment, obtaining information, intimidation, coercion and discrimination. Manfred Nowak, a former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, has repeatedly advocated for reading the element of "powerlessness" into the UNCAT definition. In his view, it is at the core of the relationship between torture victim and perpetrator. It is a situation in which a person is under the factual control or power of the person inflicting the pain or suffering, losing the capacity to resist or escape.

The requirement that a public official be involved in the torture is worth exploring further. It must be ‘inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity’. As Zach notes, this approach reflects the traditional view that States can only be held accountable for human rights violations committed by State actors. While this appears to narrow the definition of torture significantly, excluding non-state actors from the picture, in practice this narrowing is counteracted by other terms in the definition. Firstly, the term “other person acting in an official capacity” has been held by the Committee against Torture to encompass armed non-state actors. In the case of Elmi v Australia, for example, the Committee determined that an armed group, the Hawiye clan, which held control over parts of Somalian territory, fell within the definition of “other persons acting in an official capacity”. This was because the central government of Somalia has collapsed and armed factions, like the Hawiye clan, has set up quasi-governmental institutions. Secondly, the ability for states to be held responsible for “acquiescing” to torture has facilitated state responsibility for the acts of private parties by not being diligent enough in stopping private actors committing acts of torture. Nowak offers the example of female genital mutilation committed by private actors to explain how acquiescence broadens the definition of torture. If the State is taking no action to stop the private individuals from doing this “then it is the state that violates its obligation by means of acquiescence”.

Since the prohibition on torture is so widely accepted, Le Moli notes the primary purpose for creating the UNCAT was to operationalise the prohibition through the domestic law of states in a variety of ways. The treaty offers many examples of how the obligation to fulfil is represented in human rights treaties. Article 2, for example, requires states to take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture. Article 4 requires the prohibition of torture under domestic criminal law. These measures are supplemented by others to prevent impunity, such as Article 7, which requires states to either try or extradite people alleged to have committed torture and measures to extend protection for victims, for example, through the prohibition on returning victims to a jurisdiction in which they are in danger of being subjected to torture (Article 3). Finally, the treaty is supplemented by an optional protocol which focuses on the prevention of torture by establishing a system of regular visits to places of detention. The optional protocol has 94 state parties are at time of writing (July 2025). The system of visits is overseen by a special subcommittee of the Committee against Torture, which visits places of detention across the world and provides advice and assistance to state parties on implementing the Convention (Article 11).

UN Convention on the Rights of the Child

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted in 1989 by the General Assembly of the United Nations through Resolution 44/25. The Convention followed a similar pattern to other core treaties with the UN adopting a non-binding Declaration on the rights of the child in 1959, which was later followed by the binding Convention. Poland played an instrumental role in the creation of the Convention and it quickly gained traction among UN members. The Convention reached the threshold to enter into force (20 signatories) within one year of its adoption. By comparison other core human rights treaties have taken much longer to reach this milestone. The ICCPR, for example was adopted in 1966, but took almost 10 years to reach the requisite 35 signatories for it to enter into force. The UNCRC remains the most widely ratified of all core treaties with 196 ratifications at the time of writing (July 2025). It is extremely close to universal ratification, but one UN member, the United States of America, has signed but not ratified the Convention.

The Convention contains a mixture of civil and political and economic, social and cultural rights. Article 1 of the Convention offers a clear definition of children for the purposes of the Convention as “all human beings ‘below the age of eighteen years”. States are encouraged to ensure that the age of majority is raised to 18 throughout the world. The Convention contains a specific non-discrimination principle in Article 2, albeit recognising that in some circumstances it may be necessary to treat children differently or to adopt additional measures to enable them to enjoy certain rights. One of the most important articles in the Convention is Article 3, which ensures that the “best interests of the child” are the primary consideration in all actions affecting them. This applies to a variety of different circumstances including actions by “public or private social welfare institutions, courts of law, administrative authorities or legislative bodies”. This principle applies in a variety of different ways e.g. it guides interpretation of the law so that the most protective interpretation of the law is chosen by courts and also influences any processes which affect the child within the administrative state. The principle can be extremely influential, for example, in the determination of matters of family law when determining which parent or carer a child should live with. In this context, while the wishes of the parent would be considered, what best serves the child will drive the outcome.

The Convention also makes a number of dispensations for the unique position of children, notably their dependent status and their lack of enfranchisement. As the Committee on the Rights of the Child noted in General Comment No. 5 (2003), their dependent status can create real difficulties in pursuing remedies for breaches of their rights, such that states need to ensure “effective, child-sensitive procedures available to children and their representatives”, which should include information, advice and advocacy. The Convention also contains duties to disseminate information about the rights therein (Article 42), in a similar way to the provisions requiring dissemination of information on the Geneva Conventions. The Committee on the Rights of the Child notes this obligation is particularly important because in most societies children are not viewed as rights holders. As children lack the right to vote, Article 12 of the Convention ensures their right to express their views freely in all matters affecting them, making children active participants in the protection and monitoring of their rights.

The Convention also contains provisions aimed at protecting children in specific circumstances, notably refugees (art 22), children in armed conflict (art. 38) and who are victims of trafficking (art 35). The Convention has fleshed out these protections in additional protocols. An additional protocol requiring governments to increase the minimum age that children can join the armed forces from 15 years was adopted in 2000. Another protocol tackling the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography was also adopted in 2000. A later protocol allowing individual communications to the Committee was adopted in 2011. In 2024, the UN Human Rights Council proposed the creation of a further additional protocol focusing on the right to education.

UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) was adopted in December 2006 and entered into force in May 2008. As of June 2026, it has 192 state parties with a further 110 state parties to the Optional Protocol allowing the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to receive individual communications complaining of a violation of the Convention. Article 1 of the Convention offers an extremely broad definition of disability:

The CRPD has been instrumental in changing perceptions of disability and how disabled people are treated. This is reflected in different ways throughout the treaty, but two central examples will be examined here: firstly, shifting the emphasis from a medical model of disability to a social model of disability and secondly, changing approaches to legal personhood and legal capacity of disabled people.

According to the WHO, “the medical model views disability as a feature of the person, directly caused by disease, trauma or other health condition”. Disability is viewed as requiring medical treatment to 'correct' the problem with the individual. By contrast, the social model of disability views “disability as a socially created problem and not at all an attribute of an individual”. This model requires adaptations to the physical and social environment to accommodate persons with disabilities. It changes the paradigm viewing society, and not the individual within it, as the problem. The social model is reflected in the preamble to the CRPD which states:

It is also reflected in other articles of the CRPD, such as Article 9, which requires states “to identify and eliminate obstacles and barriers” to disabled people so that they can access e.g. transportation and public facilities. The Convention clearly encourages states to view disability in a different light and consider how social and environmental factors impact disabled people.

One of the overarching goals of the Convention is to ensure the active participation of persons with disabilities in their societies (see Articles 29 and 30). This includes strengthening the protection of legal personhood granted to persons with disabilities. The right to recognition as a person before the law is widely protected in international human rights law (see Article 6 UDHR and Article 16 ICCPR). However, as the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities notes in General Comment No. 1, “Historically, persons with disabilities have been denied their right to legal capacity in many areas in a discriminatory manner under substitute decision-making regimes such as guardianship, conservatorship and mental health laws that permit forced treatment”. This can result in the deprivation of many other fundamental rights, including the right to vote, reproductive and family rights and even the right to liberty in some cases. In the absence of a more robust protection of legal personhood, it becomes impossible to adequately protect other rights. Article 12 of the CRPD provides this greater protection.

Article 12 requires States to provide support in exercising legal capacity, to put in place safeguards to prevent abuse e.g. through undue influence and guarantees of property rights. The obligation to provide support in exercising legal capacity is meant to induce a paradigm shift in approach from “substitute” decision-making regimes, where someone makes decisions on behalf of a disabled person, to “supported” decision-making regimes, where a person is provided with the support they need to make a decision for themselves. As Lucy Series and Anna Nilsson point out, this was a controversial matter during the negotiations over the treaty and “Canada, the Netherlands, Australia, Poland, Egypt, Estonia, Singapore and Norway all submitted interpretive declarations when ratifying the CRPD stating that they understand article 12 to permit substitute decision-making, deprivation of legal capacity or guardianship”. However, in its first General Comment, the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities sought to correct “a general misunderstanding of the exact scope of the obligations of States parties under article 12”. The Committee noted that “the human rights-based model of disability implies a shift from the substitute decision-making paradigm to one that is based on supported decision making” and Article 12 “requires both the abolition of substitute decision-making regimes and the development of supported decision-making alternatives”.

Finally, the CRPD is unique among the core UN human rights treaties in allowing international organisations to accede to it. In Article 44 of the Convention, “Regional integration organizations" are permitted to accede to the Convention. These are international organisations which have some competence in respect of matters governed by the CRPD and once they have acceded, they are treated in a similar way to states. One key difference is that international organisations are meant to declare what competences they have in respect of the treaty. The European Union acceded to the CRPD in 2009. This was an important step as the European Union shares competence with its member states on important issues for disabled people like ensuring equal treatment in employment.

UN Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance

The issue of enforced disappearance has been a concern of UN for a long time. The UN has had a Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances addressing the issue since 1980. It also issued a Declaration on the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance in 1992, setting out important measures on the topic. However, it was only in 2006 that the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance was adopted by the UN.

The Convention sought to create a binding definition of enforced disappearance and put in place various measures to counteract it. Protections against enforced disappearance have been put in place by interpreting rights in the regional treaties, such as the right to life (see, for example, Varnava v Turkey at the European Court of Human Rights and Garcia and Family Members v Guatemala at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights), but the UN Convention created a standalone right not to be subjected to enforced disappearance for the first time. Under Article 2 of the Convention, enforced disappearance is defined as a deprivation of liberty by the state, followed by refusal to acknowledge this deprivation of liberty or fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which places a person outside the protection of the law. The Convention obliges states to ensure that enforced disappearance constitutes an offence under its criminal law (see Articles 4, 6 and 7) and to investigate instances of enforced disappearance when they arise (Article 3). There are several other measures included to operationalise the protection, including very detailed measures on how detention and release from detention should be recorded by the state (Article 17) and requirements for states to provide mutual legal assistance to search for, locate and release disappeared persons (Articles 14 and 15). The Convention broke new ground by becoming the first international treaty to explicitly contain a right to know the truth. Under Article 24 “Each victim has the right to know the truth regarding the circumstances of the enforced disappearance, the progress and results of the investigation and the fate of the disappeared person”. This is incredibly important for victims in providing closure and piercing the veils of secrecy that surround enforced disappearance, particularly after the regimes that implement widespread enforced disappearance have been removed from power. However, the Convention is not as widely ratified as the other core treaties, 78 states have ratified it at the time of writing (June 2026), with only 25 states accepting the jurisdiction of the Committee on Enforced Disappearances to receive individual communications.

International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families

The International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families was adopted by the UN in 1990, but did not enter into force until 2003. It is the least widely ratified treaty of all the core UN human rights treaties with 60 ratifications at the time of writing (June 2026). Equally the threshold for the Committee on Migrant Workers to receive individual communications of complaints regarding violations of the Convention has not reached the requisite number of ratifications to enter into force as only 4 states have accepted the Committee’s power to do this. There are several potential reasons for the low number of ratifications. Firstly, the ILO already has a significant body of international law which addresses similar topics to the Convention. Secondly, the Convention does not expand human rights protection a great deal over what is present in other conventions. It reframes protections that exist elsewhere, such as the prohibition on torture (Article 10), and applies them to migrant workers and their families. However, given many states will have already ratified the UNCAT and those protections are more detailed, comprehensive and apply to everyone within the state’s jurisdiction, the Convention does not add anything to the UNCAT. Equally it contains weaker provisions on smuggling and human trafficking (Article 68), than other international law provisions, such as the Palermo Protocol to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. The Convention does offer some useful protections for migrant workers, including a qualified right to leave any state (Article 8), specific protections of the right to liberty that take account of the unique situation of migrant workers (Article 17) and constraints on expulsion of migrant workers, which include prohibitions on collective expulsion (Article 22).

Treaty Bodies

Each of the nine core international human rights treaties has an accompanying international body of independent experts to monitor the implementation of the treaty. They do this in various ways. All treaty bodies receive and review periodic reports from states on implementation and compliance with their treaty obligations and provide concluding observations on how the state is doing. They issue guidance in the form of general comments on the obligations in the treaties. Some treaty bodies can conduct inquiries and carry out state visits to monitor compliance, this is particularly important where systematic violations of the treaties are alleged. Some treaty bodies can also examine individual communications provided the state has accepted the jurisdiction of the treaty body to do this. Through these communications, individuals can allege that the treaty is being violated by a state and issue decisions on whether the violation has occurred. The meeting schedules of the treaty bodies vary, but they typically meet for between 2-4 weeks 2 or 3 times per year.

Membership of Treaty Bodies

The treaty bodies are composed of independent experts who work on a pro bono basis to examine States’ implementation of the treaties. The members should -

• be nationals of the States parties to the relevant treaty;
• be elected by states that are party to the instrument in question;
• be persons of high moral character and recognized competence in the field of human rights;
• serve in their personal capacity;

The Human Rights Committee, for example, which oversees the implementation of the ICCPR, is composed of 18 independent experts. They are elected for a term of 4 years and can be re-elected if nominated.

The membership of treaty bodies has been the subject of persistent criticism. In 2006, Louise Arbour, then United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, issued a proposal for a Unified Standing Treaty Body in which she observed 

15 years later Callejon observed  that treaty body members

A central problem is the working patterns of the treaty bodies and the absence of remuneration, which limit the people who can participate in these roles. As the roles are part-time with sessions of 2-4 weeks, 2-3 times a year, the people who would be able to undertake this role, while maintaining other employment or undertaking caring roles, is limited. This means that the membership includes a higher number of retirees and people with more flexible working roles, such as academics.

The qualifications of the members can vary considerably. While some treaty bodies e.g. Human Rights Committee require that their members have “legal experience” (Article 28(2) ICCPR), many do not. As treaty bodies are required to interpret the law, evaluate domestic implementation and in many instances apply the law to individual complaints, it is difficult to see how such roles could be undertaken without significant legal expertise.

While efforts have been made to ensure the impartiality and independence of treaty body members, Callejon notes many instances where members have been selected “who hold executive posts in their government”, which in her view undermines the credibility of the system as a whole.

The gender balance of the different treaty bodies is generally good with the most recent statistics from 2025 showing 88 women and 84 men holding positions on the treaty bodies. There are some outliers here, such as CEDAW, which understandably has a significant gender imbalance with 22 female members and 1 male. Once this outlier is removed, the gender balance on the other committees combined actually skews toward men (56%).

Source :Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Gender distribution of treaty body members.

The contracting states are meant to prepare an initial report on ratification of the treaty and submit periodic reports every few years thereafter. The original reporting procedure could be quite laborious, with the state issuing its report, receiving a list of issues, responding to the list, attending a meeting and issuing a follow-up. The reporting burden on states could also be extremely imbalanced as it was determined by when the state ratified the treaty and the periodicity set out in the treaty. This meant that some states have had to report to multiple treaty bodies in the same year, straining their capacity. The UN has made significant efforts to coordinate reporting in recent years. In 2019, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Human Rights Committee agreed to synchronise the timing of their reviews on an 8-year cycle. The other treaty bodies generally work on a 4-year cycle. Where a state party faces multiple scheduled reviews in a short period of time, the scheduling is altered to ensure that an appropriate period elapses between reviews.

In 2014, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 68/268 which aimed at strengthening and enhancing the effective functioning of the human rights treaty body system and introduced a series of reforms to the reporting system. The resolution mandated word limits for different reports and the encouraged the implementation of a simplified reporting procedure.

This procedure was pioneered by the Committee against Torture and involved the treaty body preparing and adopting lists of issues to be transmitted to States parties prior to the submission of their periodic report. In 2022, the chairs of the treaty bodies decided that “the simplified reporting procedure will be the default procedure for all Committees”. This simplified procedure aims to allow states to submit more focused reports and “shorten the currently prevailing long duration between the submission of a State party report and its review by the Committee”.

There are different components to the reporting process. The state drafts a “common core document”, which contains information of a general and factual nature relating to the implementation of the treaties to which the reporting State is party and which may be of relevance to all or several treaty bodies. This common core document is communicated to all treaty bodies. The UN maintains a database of common core documents. The state also submits a “treaty-specific” document, which contains information relating to the implementation of the treaty which the relevant committee monitors. This report should include recent developments in law and practice affecting the enjoyment of rights under that treaty, as well as a response to issues raised by the committee in its concluding observations or its general comments. Under the simplified reporting procedure, the response of the State party to the list of issues prior to reporting constitutes the State party report.

Report Contents

The UN’s guidelines for preparing reports state that “reports should elaborate both the de jure and the de facto situation with regard to the implementation of the provisions of the treaties to which States are a party”. Reports set out the State’s constitutional and legal framework and practical measures that they have taken to implement the law. The reports also outline what remedies are available for human rights violations and identify the institutions with responsibility for monitoring compliance and implementation. They also provide explanations of state action where derogations from the treaty are made or reservations have been issued. They are often accompanied by statistical information from the state and can identify any difficulties the state faces in implementation.

Delayed Reports

In practice many states have neglected their reporting obligations to the different treaty bodies. This has been a recurring problem with the reporting process going back to the 1980s with the Human Rights Committee using their first general comment in 1981 to state -

Statistics from 2023 show that only 54 states parties did not have any overdue reports to treaty bodies. This has improved since 2021, when only 30 States did not have any overdue reports, but nonetheless reflects poorly on how seriously states take these obligations.

The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and the Convention on the Rights of the Child had the largest number of periodic reports overdue (69 and 62 respectively), though it should be noted that these are also among the treaties with the highest ratification rates among the core treaties. The statistics also show that periodic reports are much more likely to be delayed than the initial reports, indicating that the focus of states can wane after initial enthusiasm on ratification.

When a periodic report has been delayed for a long time, some treaty bodies, such as the Committee on Enforced Disappearances, will nonetheless conduct an examination of the implementation of the treaty in that State known as an ‘examination in absence of a report’. Before this process is initiated, the state is given an opportunity to submit their overdue report. After this, the committee drafts a list of issues, arranges the review and invites the state to send a delegation.

Backlog

A substantial backlog of reports which are awaiting examination has developed across the treaty bodies. This has fluctuated significantly in recent years. There was a clear dip between 2021 and 2023. A number of factors appear to have contributed to this, most notably the wider roll out of the simplified reporting procedure, the harmonisation of working methods across different treaty bodies and the increased use of information technology particularly following the Covid-19 pandemic. The UNGA has encouraged treaty bodies to “further the use of digital technologies in their work, including in their consideration of periodic reports and individual communications”.

Source: Fifth biennial report on the status of the human rights treaty body system

Since then, however, there has been a precipitous rise in the number of reports pending review. The cause of this appears to be a “financial crisis within the UN human rights system” with the various chairs of the treaty bodies expressing concerns about the lack of resources available to them, which is contributing to increases in the backlog. The chair of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, which has the largest backlog of pending reports, noted “the cancellation of the pre-sessional working group due to the liquidity crisis significantly slowed progress in reducing the backlog”. The UN as a whole is facing a severe liquidity crisis due to the failure of states to pay the amounts they owe to the organisation. This has resulted in the reduction in meeting time available to consider reports and staff cuts impacting the preparation and consideration of reports. The delays in considering reports at the treaty bodies, which can be several years, mean that the information contained in the reports can often be out of date by the time the treaty body considers them.

Sessions

The reports are considered in public sessions of the treaty bodies and the idea is that the experts on the treaty body engage in a constructive dialogue with the State delegation in attendance. Once the treaty body has reviewed the state report during its session, the committee adopts concluding observations, which are communicated to the reporting state. These will often contain recommendations from the treaty body on how to improve implementation of the treaty within the state. The state is also invited to follow up on any implementation actions it has taken in response to the session within 1-2 years of the meeting. The liquidity crisis at the UN is having “a drastic negative impact” on the work of the treaty bodies, resulting in many of the treaty bodies cancelling sessions and reports not being considered, increasing the already substantial backlog of reports. The cancellation of treaty body sessions for financial reasons is unprecedented in the history of the UN and represents an existential threat to the treaty body system unless the member states of the UN pay their contributions. While member states not paying their dues on time has been a recurring problem at the UN for decades, several states that make major contributions to the UN’s budget, most notably the USA and China have not paid their contributions, leaving the UN hundreds of millions of dollars short and forcing it to curtail a range of its activities.

General Comments

All of the treaty bodies can issue general comments and while they are not legally binding on the state parties to the treaty, they are nonetheless influential. The power to issue comments varies between the different bodies, under Article 40 of the ICCPR, for example, it states that the Human Rights Committee “shall transmit its reports, and such general comments as it may consider appropriate, to the States Parties”. Under Article 21 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women is empowered to “make suggestions and general recommendations based on the examination of reports and information received from the States Parties. Such suggestions and general recommendations shall be included in the report of the Committee together with comments, if any, from States Parties”. These are substantively similar to general comments, despite the different name. The association in various treaties between general comments and the reporting procedure led to some confusion over whether the power to issue general comments was part of the reporting procedure or separate. In practice, treaty bodies have come to treat them as separate exercises.

Takata and Hamamoto note that general comments have changed significantly over time. Early examples of general comments, such as General Comment No. 1 of the Human Rights Committee, are extremely short and focused on procedural aspects related to reporting obligations. That comment, for example focused on delays in receiving reports. However, as time has gone on, treaty bodes have come to be much more ambitious and proactive with their general comments. In some cases they have engaged in lengthy discussions of substantive law, such as the Human Rights Committee’s General Comment No. 36 on the right to life, which runs to 21 pages. Furthermore, following the recommendation of the UN General Assembly in Resolution 68/268 of 2014 to consult more broadly with states parties and other stakeholders in the elaboration of general comments, the process of creating them has become more collaborative.

General comments can perform different roles depending on the circumstances -

1. Technical advice e.g. General Comment No. 1 of the CESC which provides guidance on state reporting
2. Interpretive guidance on specific rights – General Comment No. 36 of the HRC (CTE) on the right to life
3. Cross cutting issues – General Comment No. 5 CESC on the rights of persons with disabilities.

Overall, general comments fill a gap in the treaty body’s functions. Much of the body’s work is individualised, in the sense that concluding observations and the resolution of individual communications are directed at individual states, by contrast general comments can offer an opportunity to create more generalised recommendations and consolidate the individual work into over-arching advice.

Complaints

There are three separate means of raising complaints about human rights violations before treaty bodies, inter-state complaints, individual complaints and inquiries.

Inter-State Communications

There is scope for most treaty bodies to receive complaints (referred to as “communications”) that a party to the treaty has failed to fulfil its obligations under the treaty. Under article 41(1) of the ICCPR, for example, it states -

Generally speaking for treaty bodies to receive complaints, the parties must make a separate declaration recognising the competence of the treaty body for this purpose. There are some exceptions. Firstly, CEDAW and the CRC were drafted without any inter-State communications provisions, although the CRC now permits inter-state communications for states that ratify an additional protocol. Secondly, CERD is the only treaty with a mandatory inter-state complaints mechanism.

While inter-state communications are a theoretical possibility under the treaties, in practice they are not normally used. One notable exception lies in a series of inter-state complaints made to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination involving Qatar v Saudi Arabia, Qatar v United Arab Emirates and Palestine v Israel. The Qatari cases coincided with a significant breakdown in diplomatic relations between Qatar and other states in the middle east and the case has since been discontinued as the diplomatic relations have improved. The case between Palestine and Israel is in the words of the Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination “intrinsically linked to the nature of the conflict between the two States parties” and “the consequence of systematic policies and discriminatory practices of Israeli authorities against the Palestinian population over decades”. Inter-state complaints in international human rights law are typically the result of a high degree of antagonism between the states involved and these cases are no different.

Individual Communications

There are also individual complaints procedures for all treaty bodies. These procedures are not available by default and instead require states to either make a specific declaration that they consent to receive individual complaints e.g. Art 22 UNCAT, or ratify an additional protocol to the treaty e.g. the first optional protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. A certain number of states must ratify or make a declaration before the individual complaints procedure comes into force. Thus far only one treaty body, the Committee on Migrant Workers, has not received the required number of declarations (10) for their individual complaints procedure to come online.

The number of individual cases received across the treaty bodies has been increasing over time. According to the most recent statistics available at time of writing, in 2023, 408 new individual communications were registered across the different treaty bodies. This is the highest number of complaints received by the treaty bodies since the adoption of resolution 68/268, which aimed to reform the treaty body system (while there was a higher number in 2019, 252 of the complaints submitted were grouped into a single case). The Human Rights Committee receives by far the most communications of any of the treaty bodies.

Callejon, Kemileva and Kirchmeier argue the individual complaint procedures are “instrumental in guaranteeing human rights for individuals and providing states parties with guidance as to how to implement their legal obligations”. The communications process is under-used when compared to cases brought before regional human rights bodies, which Callejon, Kemileva and Kirchmeier attribute to a “lack of visibility and accessibility of the procedures themselves and of treaty body jurisprudence”. Despite this “under-use”, a backlog of pending cases has been steadily increasing over the years. As with the backlog of reports awaiting consideration by the treaty body, the increasing backlog of individual complaints is the result of “a lack of staffing needed to prepare draft decisions for the Committees” as a result of the liquidity crisis in the UN.

Source: Fifth biennial report on the status of the human rights treaty body system

The communications procedures are quasi-judicial processes, which are predominantly based on written communications. There are typically very few oral hearings of individual complaints, some have argued this makes the process “inexpensive and more accessible” than other complaints procedures because the parties do not necessarily need to have a lawyer to represent them.

Once a complaint meets the admissibility criteria, the complaint is communicated to the state for their observations. States typically have 6 months to respond to the complaint and the applicant is also given an opportunity to respond to the state’s comments. While the case is pending before the treaty body, the individual concerned can ask the treaty body to impose interim measures. The Committee on the Rights of the Child has issued some detailed guidance on interim measures, which is also instructive of how other treaty bodies handle interim measures. Under the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on a communications procedure, interim measures are only available in “exceptional circumstances” “to avoid possible irreparable damage to the victim or victims of the alleged violation” and interim measures at other treaty bodies follow a similar pattern. They can be particularly useful in halting expulsions or the imposition of capital punishments. The treaty bodies normally endeavour to reach a friendly settlement between the parties. When the treaty body concludes that the treaty has been violated by the state party, it will make general and specific recommendations and indicate what it considers to be appropriate remedial action on the part of the state. While these are not legally binding on the state, the requirement of the state to comply with the treaty’s terms in good faith means they should cooperate and implement the recommendations. The treaty body will usually invite the state to follow up after a few months to indicate what measures have been taken to implement the recommendations made.

Inquiries

Six of the UN treaty bodies also have the power to conduct inquiries upon receipt of reliable information on serious, grave or systematic violations by a State party of the conventions they monitor. These are the Committee against Torture, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the Committee on Enforced Disappearances, the Committee on Economic Social and Cultural Rights and the Committee on the Rights of the Child.

While the procedure is not as widely utilised as individual communication procedures to the treaty bodies, it offers some unique advantages over the individual communications procedures for the treaty bodies that can carry them out. Firstly, inquiries allow the treaty bodies to address more systemic problems than those raised by individual complaints. Secondly, treaty bodies can initiate inquiries themselves on receipt of reliable information, meaning that they do not need to wait for individual communications to be brought to them before acting to address problems.

Inquiries have at times resulted in significant changes to human rights protections within states. In 2018, for example, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women conducted an inquiry into access to abortion in Northern Ireland and concluded that Northern Ireland had an unduly restrictive system which violated the rights of women across Northern Ireland. The report’s findings were swiftly acted upon by the UK government which passed the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2019 requiring the government minister responsible for Northern Ireland to “ensure that the recommendations in paragraphs 85 and 86 of the CEDAW report are implemented in respect of Northern Ireland”.

Human Rights Council

The United Nations Human Rights Council was created to replace the UN Commission on Human Rights when the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 60/251. It is an intergovernmental body within the United Nations with 47 members with responsibility for promoting universal respect for the protection of all human rights and fundamental freedoms. As Shah and Sivakumaran note, the creation of the UN HRC was part of a wider effort across the UN “to enhance the human rights programme and integrate it into the broad range of the Organization’s activities”. As such, one of its primary objectives is to promote the effective coordination and the mainstreaming of human rights within the United Nations system. In June 2007, the Human Rights Council passed Resolution 5/1, which laid out the working methods and practices of the Human Rights Council in detail.

Members

The council’s members are divided into 5 regional groups, with each grouping allocated a specific number of seats.

1. African States: 13 seats
2. Asia-Pacific States: 13 seats
3. Latin American and Caribbean States: 8 seats
4. Western European and other States: 7 seats
5. Eastern European States: 6 seats

Members of the council are elected by the General Assembly, serve for a period of three years and are meant to “uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights”. However, this is not always borne out in practice and several States with weak human rights records, such as Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and the Democratic Republic of Congo have served as members of the Council.

Functions

The Human Rights Council has many functions. It holds regular meetings, at least three times a year, providing an international forum for dialogue on thematic human rights issues. At these meetings it can pass resolutions expressing the will of the international community on specific human rights issues. It can also host special sessions in response to urgent human rights situations. It appoints independent human rights experts to monitor situations in specific countries or examine specific thematic issues, these are referred to as special procedures. It can establish commissions of inquiry and fact-finding missions to gather evidence of human rights violations. However, the function it is best known for is to serve as a forum for the “peer review” of UN Member States’ human rights records by carrying out the “Universal Periodic Review” (UPR), which reviews “the fulfilment by each State of its human rights obligations and commitments”.

Universal Periodic Review

The primary objectives of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) are -

• to improve the human rights situation on the ground in states;
• to fulfil the State’s human rights obligations;
• to enhance states’ capacity to protect human rights;
• to share best practice;
• to supporting cooperation on human rights protection
• to encourage cooperation and engagement with UN human rights bodies.

One of the key principles guiding the UPR’s work is that it should ‘complement and not duplicate other human rights mechanisms, thus representing an added value’. The review is meant to be objective, transparent and constructive. It should not be overly burdensome for the state to undertake and should take into account the State’s level of development.

Under the UPR system, every member state of the United Nations undergoes a review of its human rights record ever 4.5 years. The reviews are conducted in stages. Information on the State’s human rights record is gathered from various sources. The State under review provides information on their implementation of human rights obligations in the form of a national report. Information is received from different UN bodies, including special procedures, human rights treaty bodies and other UN entities. Finally, information from other stakeholders, such as non-governmental organisation and national human rights institutions, is received.

During a meeting of the UPR working group of the Human Rights Council, an interactive discussion takes place between the State under review and other UN Member States. The other states can ask the State under review questions about its record or make comments or recommendations. This serves an important function as often the process of engaging with human rights issues can be abstract or delayed. With the treaty bodies, for example, reports are submitted and processed by the treaty bodies over a protracted period of time. In the UPR, the spotlight is placed on each country for a specified period of time, which lends an immediacy and focus to addressing human rights issues, which is often lacking in other forums. Carraro notes another key difference between the UPR and the consideration of reports by treaty bodies is that the UPR reviewers are other states and not human rights experts. The UPR’s recommendations are also attributed to the state making the recommendation. This changes the character of the recommendations significantly from those coming from the treaty bodies, generating more peer and public pressure on states to comply with their obligations. Carraro also notes that NGOs play a significant role in the UPR process in gathering information and exerting pressure on governments to act on commitments made at the UPR.

After the meeting an outcome report is prepared providing a summary of the discussion. There is also an opportunity for states to make recommendations to the state under review (there is a database of recommendations here). Tens of thousands of recommendations have been made to different states since the creation of the UPR. These vary widely in both their content and their terms. As is often the case with diplomatic activity, McMahon notes “The way in which recommendations are phrased can be extremely revealing in terms of the intent of the recommending state”. McMahon has attempted to categorise the recommendations according to their strength – from softer requests to harder calls for specific, tangible and verifiable actions by the state. The recommendations cover a wide range of topics from recommending that the state ratify certain treaties, withdraw reservations to human rights treaties or adopt domestic legislation to fully implement human rights obligations, to very specific issues within the State. Fukuda argues the UPR offers its “unique value” to the international human rights system in what he terms “borderline recommendations”. States will accept easy recommendations and likely reject sensitive ones, but there will be an area between those two – borderline recommendations - where States can be drawn into accepting and implementing changes.

The UPR is arguably exceeding expectations of the impact it was expected to have. Lane argues research into the first three cycles of the UPR is replete with evidence of the mechanism’s impact. The exact reason why it is working is the subject of debate among academics. Etone argues that soft law, cooperative mechanisms like the UPR can exert cognitive and social pressures to conform, which may be harder to achieve through more coercive mechanisms. Lane argues that the UPR offers a platform for domestic mobilisation providing domestic actors with an effective and often otherwise "unavailable avenue for dialogue with their governments". There have been attempts to monitor the actions states have taken in addressing accepted recommendations. Yet, as Fukuda also notes, correlation does not always equal causation and “researchers have found it impossible to establish the direct and exclusive causality between the UPR and the improvement of human rights situations on the ground”. It is also reductive to focus exclusively on this as a metric for success or utility. The repetition of recommendations from a variety of different States over time can have an impact on the State subject to review and the recommendations serve a broader function. As Shah and Sivakumaran argue, the UPR recommendations serve a useful function in legitimising UN treaty bodies. When states echo the work of UN bodies in their recommendations, it serves to reinforce and legitimise that work

Shah and Sivakumaran also argue that the UPR offers helpful insights into different states’ views on the scope of human rights obligations. Such insights can be extremely important in determining opinio juris when trying to establish that an obligation is customary international law. The State has the opportunity to respond to the recommendations after they have been collated and the recommendations can either be ‘accepted’ or ‘noted’ by the State under review. As the UPR occurs on a regular basis every four years, the states are encouraged to report back on their progress in implementing recommendations and have even begun to issue “mid-term reports” on their progress.

Special Sessions

Special Sessions of the Human Rights Council can be held to address urgent human rights situations. These sessions can be called at the request of Member State sitting on the Council provided it is supported by at least one third of the Council membership.

At the time of writing (June 2026) there have been 39 Special Sessions of the UN Human Rights Council. The focus of these sessions has varied from thematic sessions, like the 10th special session on the global financial crisis and the 7th session on the world food crisis, to sessions focused on specific territory.

One of the driving reasons behind the creation of the UN Human Rights Council was a desire to reform the UN Commission on Human Rights, which was viewed as being overly politicised and contentious. The UPR was supposed to offer a “change of course in relation to the politicized, over-selective focus on the human rights situation in specific countries”. While the UPR has helped to diversify where the UN’s attention in relation to human rights is focused over time, the disproportionate focus on specific countries has continued elsewhere in the Human Rights Council’s work. This is most evident in the special sessions which continue to focus disproportionately on specific countries with 8 sessions on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, 5 on Syria, 5 on Sudan and 3 on Myanmar. This has led Freedman and Houghton to argue that the Council has been politicised from its outset.

The situation in Israel-Palestine has occupied a great deal of time at the Council both through the special sessions and other activities. At every regular session of the council, Agenda Item 7 mandates that the human rights situation in ‘Palestine and other occupied Arab territories’ is discussed. This led Israel to suspend its relations with UN Human Rights Council in 2012, although it re-engaged with the UPR process in 2013 and since despite expressing “strong reservations regarding the Human Rights Council” and complaining that it was treating Israel unfairly.

The bloc structure of the Council has encouraged politicisation. Freedman and Houghton note it reinforces the strong political allegiances within groups, leads to bloc-voting and different factions launching politically-motivated attacks on some states while shielding others. This is clearly evident in the case of Israel and while the plight of Palestinians is clearly important, Freedman and Houghton condemn “the vastly disproportionate attention being devoted to Israel and Syria, whilst other similar or more egregious situations have been given little or no attention”. They conclude that the Council is beset with the same problems that dogged its predecessor.

Special Procedures

The UN special procedures comprise special rapporteurs, independent experts and working groups. They can have country specific or thematic mandates. The main role of special procedures is to undertake country visits, bring allegations of violations or abuses to the attention of states through direct communications, conduct studies, engage in advocacy and raise public awareness.

The Human Rights Council made some adjustments to the process for appointing special procedures mandate holders in Resolution 5/1 in 2007. The Council established a consultative group to review candidates and make recommendations for appointment to Council. As these are made public, it has increased the transparency of appointments. It also created different requirements for the appointees. Nominees must have demonstrated expertise, relevant experience, independence, impartiality, personal integrity and objectivity. They must serve for no more than 6 years and individuals holding decision-making positions within states are expressly precluded from being appointed. Special procedures mandate holders are not UN staff and they are not paid by the UN. While these measures have helped to improve the independence of mandate holders, it has also significantly reduced the number of potential candidates for the role. A code of conduct for special procedure mandate holders was also implemented, although this was criticised at the time by Amnesty International for its “hastily drafted and imprecise provisions that could negatively affect the effectiveness of the Special Procedures”. Special procedures report annually to the Human Rights Council on the activities they have undertaken and their activities are summarised in a report from the Council’s Secretariat each year.

Nolan argues that the communications procedure used by special procedures may be the single most useful tool they have. Mandate holders can issue urgent appeals to states to bring a halt to ongoing violations or prevent violations likely to occur, or send “allegation letters” outlining alleged human rights violations and requesting a response from the government to them. A database of communications is maintained by the UN. Nolan also notes that special procedures have a number of advantages compared to other parts of the UN that make them particularly useful to NGOs and human rights defenders:

• Ability of mandate holders to issue urgent appeals to states
• More accessible than other UN institutions, which may impose accreditation requirements on NGOs
• Mandate holders operate independently of treaty ratification by States
• No need to exhaust domestic remedies before approaching special procedures
• Independence

Compliant Procedure

The Human Rights Council also has a complaints procedure to address consistent patterns of gross and reliably attested violations of all human rights and all fundamental freedoms occurring in any part of the world and under any circumstances.

Complaints are screened against admissibility criteria which are similar to those applied by other courts and treaty bodies. Complainants must show domestic remedies have been exhausted, must submit the complaint in an official language of the UN, describe the relevant facts and not duplicate complaints that are before another international body. One unusual criterion is the requirement that the complaint must not be manifestly politically motivated, or based exclusively on reports disseminated by mass media. If the complaint passes the initial screening it is considered by the working group on communications, which meets twice a year to consider complaints and any responses from the states concerned. The working group can dismiss the complaint, request the State to provide further information or refer it to another working group on situations. This working group also meets twice a year, it can also dismiss the complaint, request the state to provide more information or refer it to the Human Rights Council if it reveals a pattern of gross and reliably attested violations of human rights. The Council usually considers complaints in closed meetings at least once a year. It can discontinue consideration of the complaint, request more information from the state, appoint an expert to monitor the situation and report back, discontinue reviewing the matter confidentially and open the complaint to public consideration or recommend to OHCHR to provide technical cooperation, capacity building assistance or advisory services to the State concerned. The Human Rights Council reports that it receives up to 15,000 communications to the complaint procedure each year and that the response rate of States under review is over 95%. The fact that the complaints are considered confidentially in closed sessions clearly encourages greater levels of engagement among the states under review.

Overall, the UN system of human rights protection is characterised by proliferation. A proliferation of different core treaties, at times duplicating the obligations on states (e.g. the prohibition on torture in the ICCPR and UNCAT). There is also a proliferation of avenues to complain about human rights violations, with special procedures, the Human Rights Council and treaty bodies all offering distinct complaint mechanisms, with different levels of accessibility and criteria for admissibility. Finally, we can see a proliferation of reporting obligations on states, to different treaty bodies and to the Human Rights Council. While many efforts have been made to rationalise and streamline the reporting obligations on states, they can still be quite onerous.

Further Reading

The Impact of the United Nations Human Rights Treaties on the Domestic Level: Twenty Years On – Second Revised Edition | Brill

Research project: Deep Impact through Soft Jurisprudence?

Full article: The Universal Periodic Review: A Catalyst for Domestic Mobilisation

Suggested Citation – Stuart Wallace, ‘The UN System of International Human Rights Protection’ in Stuart Wallace and Clare James (eds), Open Access International Human Rights Law (University of Leeds, 2026)