ESTABLISHING STATE RESPONSIBILITY FOR BREACHING HUMAN RIGHTS TREATY OBLIGATIONS: AVENUES UNDER UN HUMAN RIGHTS TREATIES

Abstract

United Nations human rights treaties dealing with specific concerns contain provisions in terms of obligations for states, rather than individual rights. This has consequences for the assessment by treaty monitoring bodies of the level of compliance by States Parties. While human rights norms generally impose obligations on states, the opposite is not always the case; not all obligations in human rights treaties contain corresponding rights for individuals. While the ILC Articles on State responsibility address the establishment of state responsibility in contentious procedures established by the regional human rights conventions; they do not take into account other monitoring procedures that exist, in particular under United Nations human rights treaties. These instruments create different mandates for treaty monitoring bodies, under which they can and do examine treaty implementation in much more general terms than would be possible under the contentious procedure. The individual complaint procedure under some of the treaties, the inquiry procedure and the reporting procedure offer possibilities to assess whether states' non-compliance with treaty obligations. This article examines these possibilities in the light of the ILC Articles on state responsibility.