States of Emergency - Centre for Policy Alternatives

‘views’ are dependent on the attitude to compliance of the State
concerned. While many States have acceded to the ICCPR,
signatories to the First Optional Protocol, arguably the most
robust enforcement mechanisms contemplated by the ICCPR, are
markedly less.
In respect of derogations and states of emergency, the Committee
is also constrained by the framework set out in Article 4, although
it has demonstrated it would hold States to high standards of
compliance within that framework.
Perhaps the chief drawback of the Committee’s enforcement
capacity is the legal status of the Committee’s ‘views’: in effect its
judgments on the merits of individual complaints under the First
Optional Protocol. Article 5 (4) of the First Optional Protocol only
states that, “The Committee shall forward its views to the State
Party concerned and to the individual.” On the face of the text as
well as in practice, this is an extremely weak provision. In Sri
Lanka, various authors of communications who had obtained
Lindings in their favour have had to institute further legal action in
domestic courts in order to obtain the recommended remedies.
Indeed, it was just such an attempt to have the Committee’s views
implemented by the State that gave rise to the Singarasa
 Case,
which had the unintended and unpredictable consequences of Sri
Lanka’s accession to the First Optional Protocol, declared
unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, in addition to a ruling that
the ICCPR, without legislative enactment, created no rights at
domestic law. 207 126
207
See further discussion on this case and the Supreme Court’s Advisory
Opinion (2008) on the compliance of Sri Lankan law with rights
recognised by the ICCPR in Chapter 6.