States of Emergency - Centre for Policy Alternatives

Within these institutional constraints, therefore, the Committee
has been (a) generally reluctant to gainsay the initial political act
of declaration
 of an emergency, although it has been far more
robust in reviewing the proportionality of substantive
measures. 208 This goes to the heart of the question whether the
right of derogation is the exclusive right of States guaranteed
under international law (b) the Committee has also generally been
unable to address the question of perpetuated emergencies, again
arising out of the weaknesses of the State reporting procedure;
and (c) notwithstanding (a) and (b), the Committee has
demonstrated a willingness to challenge States and review
excessive substantive emergency measures against the ICCPR
standards as interpreted by it. 209
Given the weakness of the supervision and enforcement
framework of the ICCPR, seemingly dependent on the muniLicence,
as it were, of domestic authorities as demonstrated in the Sri
Lankan case, it is necessary to be clear about what this framework
is. This is the subject of the next section.
4.2
 International
Protection
vs.
National
Implementation:
The
Enforcement
Framework
of
the
ICCPR
A key feature of the ICCPR as one of the three instruments
constituting the International Bill of Rights, is not only that it sets
out a list of substantive rights in universal and mostly concrete
208
See Jorge
Landinelli
Silva
et
al
v.
Columbia, Communication No. R/15/64;
Consuelo
Salgar
de
Montejo
v.
Colombia, Communication no. 34/1978 in
Selected
Decisions
of
the
Human
Rights
Committee
under
the
Optional
Protocol
(1985)
209
See Gross and Ní Aoláin: p.298‐299
127