AU Human Rights Series: The UN Human Rights Legal framework: the importance of the human rights treaties and its Treaty Bodies

The United Nations human rights treaties serve as the core UN legal system that spells out the State parties’ obligations and establishes the human rights bodies with the mandate of supervising compliance. They are seen as one of the significant contemporary human rights achievements since the creation of the United Nations system. However, this legal framework is facing serious challenges ranging limited ratification of several of the treaties to inadequate national implementation of the substantive obligations. Furthermore, treaty bodies are suffering of a persistent lack of financial and administrative resources to perform their mandate, situation that appears to be getting worse recently. Panelist will discuss the importance of this human rights regime and the current issues the these treaties and their treaty bodies are facing in the context of the 2020 reform process, as well as the political and institutional support required from the UN member states and other stakeholders in the current debate.

Alvaro Botero, Member of the UN Committee on Migrant Workers (CMW)
Maria Clara Galvis, Member of the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED)
Helene Tigroudja, Member of the UN Human Rights Committee
Moderator: Jens Modvig, Chair of the UN Committee Against Torture