States of Emergency - Centre for Policy Alternatives

The relevant State Party has an opportunity to respond to the
allegations on both admissibility and merits. It may also inform
the Committee regarding any remedial measures that have been
taken subsequent to the communication. The Committee takes
into account the information given by both the complainant and
the State Party in arriving at its views.
Several concerns expressed by commentators 221 regarding the
Committee’s procedure in respect to expeditiousness and
efLiciency have now been addressed, with the result that all
communications are now vetted by the Committee member
serving as the Special Rapporteur on New Communications
(having been screened by the Secretariat of the OfLice of the
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights before). It
then goes to the Working Group on New Communications where
admissibility is decided by consensus. If there is no consensus at
this stage, the matter is decided by the full Committee.
An increasing number of States have in the last one and half
decades acceded to the Optional Protocol, indicating on surface a
positive trend in human rights protection worldwide.
Unfortunately, the reality is somewhat different with many States
failing to take active measures to give effect to the Committee’s
views, routinely ignoring adverse Lindings, and in some cases
displaying outright hostility.
The fundamental weakness, as any number of commentators point
out, is that the Committee’s views are legally non‐binding,
carrying only the force of moral suasion and some political
221
McGoldrick (1991), op cit, Ch.4, esp. 202‐246; J. Crawford, ‘The
UN
Human
Rights
Treaty
System:
A
System
in
Crisis’ in Alston & Crawford
(2000), op cit., Ch.1
136