Mental health policy and practice across Europe: an overview

Monitoring compliance with the international
human rights treaties
A human rights perspective 311
While it will be up to each state to decide what legislative and other measures
should be adopted in order to give effect to the rights recognized under the
treaties, their compliance with the treaty obligations will be subject to some
form of scrutiny.
UN human rights treaty system
The main UN monitoring mechanism is periodic reporting. Each of the UN
treaties has a monitoring body responsible for examining the implementation
of the relevant treaty and states are required to submit periodic reports (ranging
from every two to every five years) to them, outlining their compliance with
that treaty (O’Flaherty 2002: 1).
The treaty-monitoring bodies publish ‘General Comments’ which highlight
the issues that states are expected to address in their periodic reports and also
provide general interpretations of the treaty provisions (Alston and Crawford
2000: 22; O’Flaherty 2002: 7).
While four of the treaties (ICCPR, CERD, CAT and CEDAW – see Box 13.1)
enable the monitoring bodies to consider complaints from alleged victims of
violations of the relevant treaty, this procedure is subject to the state’s acceptance
of the procedure. Furthermore, the treaty-monitoring bodies have no
means of enforcing their findings on such complaints (O’Flaherty 2002).
European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)
Individuals alleging that their rights under the ECHR have been violated can
pursue a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights, once they have
exhausted domestic remedies. Where the complaint is upheld, the state is
required to take remedial action (see Starmer 1999: Ch. 30). Thus, the ECHR is of
major significance as it can have a direct impact on government law and policy:
‘it is the only international Treaty in the history of humankind that guarantees
the right of an individual to make a complaint that is capable of resulting in a
binding judgment enforceable against a member state’ (Clements and Read
2003: 17).
European Social Charter
States are required to submit annual reports to the European Committee of
Social Rights on how they are implementing the Charter and the Committee
publishes its ‘conclusions’ on each state’s compliance. Although individuals
cannot pursue complaints to the Committee, since 1998 certain organizations,
for example employers’ organizations and trade unions in the country concerned
and non-governmental organizations enjoying participatory status
within the Council of Europe, may lodge complaints against those states which
have accepted this ‘collective complaints procedure’. The state may be asked to
take specific measures in order to comply with the Charter. However, Churchill