States of Emergency - Centre for Policy Alternatives

terms, but also that it provides for supervision and monitoring of
the observance of these rights in the form of procedural
obligations for States Parties, and by the role envisaged for the
treaty‐body, the Human Rights Committee. This feature of the
ICCPR is signiLicant in that it brought the rule of law ideal as close
to reality as seemed possible within the international legal system
in the age before the special international tribunals and the
International Criminal Court. 210
There are three principal mechanisms by which the Human Rights
Committee is given competence to supervise States in respect of
their treaty obligations: (a) the reporting procedure (Article 40);
(b) Inter‐State communications (Article 41 and 42); and (c) the
provision in the First Optional Protocol for individual
communications.
It is also to be noted that the general obligations imposed upon
States Parties in Part II (Articles 2 – 5) are a signiLicant
accountability mechanism in that it requires explicit commitments
to respect, protect and promote civil and political rights, including
through the provision of effective remedies, and extending the
protection of the ICCPR to all individuals within the territorial
jurisdiction of a State Party irrespective of his or her citizenship
status or rights. Moreover, the Committee is more generous than
most national or supranational human rights regimes in respect of
its admissibility criteria.
Finally, it is arguable that the requirement, used imaginatively by
the Committee since 1981, to issue General Comments can also be
210
Henry J. Steiner, ‘Individual
Claims
in
a
World
of
Massive
Violations:
What
Role
for
the
Human
Rights
Committee’ in Philip Alston & James
Crawford (Eds.) (2000) The
Future
of
UN
Human
Rights
Treaty
Monitoring (Cambridge: Cambridge UP): p.15; p.27 et seq.
128