Pros and Cons of Different Human Rights Mechanisms

The decision on which international human rights mechanism to use, when seeking remedies for the victim of women’s rights violations, should be proceeded by careful analysis of the limitations and advantages of the procedures provided by the relevant treaties. The criteria for the choice must include the best interest of the victim and the aims that are planned to be achieved by bringing a case. Although all human rights treaties provide protection from discrimination on the basis of sex, the procedures that they offer differ in terms of their accessibility, remedies and legal force of their decisions.

The universal human rights bodies (apart from CEDAW Committee) that admit communications from individuals are: Human Rights Committee (HRC), Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) and Committee against Torture (CAT). The treaties that they monitor are respectively: the International Covenant on Political and Civil Rights, International Covenant on Elimination of Racial Discrimination and International Convention against Torture.

In order to decide which Committee to use, one should take into consideration the specialization of these bodies and analyze their former decisions on similar issues/cases, including their recommendations to the State Parties to remedy the situation. In some cases CEDAW, as the gender specific human rights body, might be easier to use due to its broad definition of discrimination on the basis of sex.

A common weakness of all procedures provided by UN Committees is the non-binding character of their decisions. On the other hand, the lack of time limits for submitting the communications to all of them except CERD might be important while choosing between UN and the regional human rights mechanisms. The regional human rights systems include: 1) African Commission on Human Rights and African Court of Justice and Human Rights, 2) Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and Inter-American Court of Human Rights and 3) European Court of Human Rights. The decisions of all regional courts of human rights are binding in contrast to those of the commissions. Out of the three courts listed above, only the European Court of Human Rights admits complaints from the individuals though after rigorous pre-admissibility evaluation. 

As mentioned above, the forms of redress sought by the victims of the violations of women’s human rights should be taken into account while deciding which mechanism to use. For example, the CEDAW Committee in its decisions takes into account the systematic aspects of discrimination and, in its recommendations to the States, points to concrete actions that should be taken to prevent the violations from happening in future. This has seldom been a case of European Court of Human Rights which often limits its decisions to defining the compensation for the victims of the violation of the Convention for the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms.