International Disability Alliance

The Human Rights Treaty Bodies are committees of independent experts that monitor implementation of the core international human rights treaties. They are created in accordance with the provisions of the treaty that they monitor.

When a country ratifies one of the treaties, it assumes a legal obligation to implement the rights recognized in that treaty and commits to submit regular reports to the monitoring committee set up under that treaty on how the rights are being implemented. To meet their reporting obligation, States must submit an initial report usually one year after joining (two years in the case of the CRC and CRPD) and then periodically in accordance with the provisions of the treaty (usually every four or five years).

While the reporting process might vary slightly from one Committee to the other, the most frequent features of the process are as follows:

• A pre-sessional working group of the Committee meets prior to each of the regular sessions of the Committee to produce a list of issues, which contains a number of questions addressed to the State Party, formulated on the basis of the documents submitted by the State Party (common core document, initial or periodic report, annexes to the report) and on information made available to the Committee from all other sources, including NGOs.
• The State Party is requested to provide written replies to the list of issues in advance of the session at which its report is scheduled for consideration.
• In light of all the information available, during its session in a public meeting, the Committee engages in an interactive dialogue with the State delegation. Based on this dialogue, the Committee adopts its Concluding Observations, which include, among others, recommendations for action directed to the State.
• States are expected to pay special attention in their subsequent report to the implementation of these recommendations. Some treaty bodies have implemented follow-up procedures through which they ask States parties to provide feedback (usually within one year) on the actions taken to implement a selected number of recommendations, which the Committee considers of special relevance.

Mainstreaming the rights of persons with disabilities in the work of all United Nations treaty bodies is a priority of the International Disability Alliance. To this end, IDA contributes to the work of treaty bodies besides the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities submitting suggested questions and recommendations to be included in lists of issues and concluding observations adopted by the Committees to the States under review as well as making submissions with respect to general comments or recommendations being elaborated by respective treaty bodies.

2012 Calendar for Treaty Body Sessions

IDA Factsheet on the List of Issues (Document produced by IDA on how to contribute to the list of issues of the UN Treaty Bodies).

News!!

Treaty body strengthening process

In response to the continual increase of human rights treaties and bodies, and the multiplication and diversity of working methods within the treaty body system, in 2009 the High Commissioner for Human Rights called on States parties, and other stakeholders including NHRIs, NGOs and academics to initiate a process of reflection on how to streamline and strengthen the treaty body system. As a result several papers have been elaborated to assist in this process of reflection, including the Dublin Statement, the Poznan Statement, the Marrakesh Statement.

Last year in November 2010, on the occasion of the first anniversary of the adoption of the Dublin Statement, twenty NGOs, including IDA, issued a joint response setting out initial comments on the parameters, methods ad objectives of UN treaty body reform as presented in the Dublin Statement. Please click the links below to have access this NGO Response: English; Spanish and French.

In 2011, the OHCHR has held several consultations with stakeholders, including NGOs:

• IDA attended a consultation meeting of international and national human rights NGOs convened by the South Korean Human Rights Commission and the OHCHR in Seoul on 19-20 April 2011. The Seoul Statement is a joint NGO statement which was drafted by the NGOs attending this meeting.
• A subsequent civil society consultation with regional and national NGOs was held in Pretoria on 20-21 June 2011 hosted by the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria. The Pretoria Statement was issued by the participants of this consultation at the conclusion of the meeting, to which IDA signed on.

A consultation with States parties was held in Sion on 12-13 May 2011, click the link to have access to report of this technical consultation.

On 10-11 November, a meeting on the treaty body strengthening process was held in Dublin, named Dublin II, two years after the original Dublin meeting started off these discussions. Treaty body members, civil society and representatives of NHRIs, the OHCHR and the Irish government attended to review the recommendations made to date in the treaty body strengthening process. These recommendations have been synthesised in the Dublin II Outcome document. Two further consultations are foreseen with States in February and April and it is envisaged that the High Commissioner will be launching her report on treaty body strengthening by mid 2012.