Part III Organs Monitoring Treaty Compliance, 10 The Human Rights Committee

Subject(s):

Human rights

This chapter discusses the United Nations Human Rights Committee, which is in charge of the supervision of a major human rights treaty within the UN machinery, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). This was adopted in 1966 and came into force in 1976. The Human Rights Committee enjoys a peculiar position in the international human rights architecture. It has been labelled ‘as one of the most active and innovative’ bodies among the UN institutions involved in human rights monitoring, considering that it is in charge of one of the two covenants which, together with the Universal Declaration, are sometimes presented as the ‘International Bill of Rights’ and covers the broadest subject-jurisdiction matter. At the same time, the Committee and its work remain overlooked and quite obscure even for most human rights lawyers and certainly for a lay audience. The chapter assesses the Committee’s mechanisms and work.