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THE UN HUMAN RIGHTS TREATY BODY SYSTEM…

With regard to capacity-building, 4.5 mil. USD will be redistributed to support

the states parties in building the capacity to implement their treaty obligations, above

all by the provision of technical and expert assistance to assist states in fulfilling their

treaty obligations. The resolution also requests the Secretary-General to submit to the

General Assembly, on a biennial basis, a comprehensive report on the status of the

treaty body system and progress achieved. Last but not least, it decides that the state

of the treaty body system will be considered no later than six years from the date of

adoption of this resolution, to review the effectiveness of the measures taken and, if

appropriate, to decide on further action. In other words, for the following six years

the system will function based on the outcome of the intergovernmental process.

To sum up, a long negotiation process was advantageous for achieving general

agreement, but within the negotiations the really functional proposal was taken out.

Thus, the supported measures do not contain the leading recommendation by the

High Commissioner that would have the real potential to increase cooperation of

states and to combat backlogs – the comprehensive reporting calendar. The outcome

of the process indeed brought a rationalization, and not only the additional meeting

time provided, strengthening of capacity-building and introduction of webcasting

and videoconferencing, but also the measures saving resources should be welcomed.

Nevertheless, it is appropriate to point out that, according to the Secretary-

General’s budgetary information, taking both additional costs and savings into

account, the resolution’s adoption should lead to a net cost increase of 194,000 USD

for the 2014 – 2015 biennium.

This represents 97,000 USD annually. Taking

into account that the annual costs of the treaty body system are approximately

50 mil. USD, this represents an increase in the budget for the treaty body system

that amounts to only 0.2%. It is therefore necessary to conclude that locating the

negotiations within the General Assembly brought a result in which the system will

more or less only redistribute its current resources without receiving new ones.

Conclusions

The individual treaty bodies have been created on an

ad hoc

basis since the

1960s, and at that time they were not supposed to build a system. Today we have

nine similar treaty bodies which function more or less independently from each

other. At the same time, for already more than twenty years we have been aware of

many important deficiencies of the mechanism that are described above, which in

reality substantially limit the potential of the treaty bodies to contribute to the real

For more information on the outcome, see O’Flaherty, Michael.

The UN General Assembly and the

Strengthening of the United Nations Human Rights Treaty Body System

, available at:

http://www.universal

rights.org/blogs/67-the-un-general-assembly-and-the-strengthening-the-united-nations-human-rights-

treaty-body-system. The topic is also discussed by Broecker, Christen.

UN General Assembly Concludes

its Review of the Human Rights Treaty Bodies

, available at:

http://www.universal-rights.org/blogs/74-un-

general-assembly-concludes-its-review-of-the-human-rights-treaty-bodies.

Fifth committee considers financial implications of draft resolution on strengthening United Nations human

rights treaty body system

, available at:

http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2014/gaab4103.doc.htm.