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Adjusted Ratification: Post-Commitment Actions to UN Human Rights Treaties

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Abstract

A rich literature examines human rights treaty commitment and compliance. A subset of this literature has begun to examine the international legal actions states make following treaty ratification. I argue that the ways that states legally engage with treaties following commitment to UN human rights treaties is much more nuanced and differentiated than scholars have thus far presented via Reservation, Understanding, and Declaration. I introduce a first descriptive analysis of what I term Post-Commitment Actions (PCAs) to UN human rights treaties and generate varying hypotheses of why different PCAs have different relationships with expected human rights practices. I conduct a preliminary statistical analysis of the effect of PCAs on human rights practices and find that they are varied and important. Some PCAs result in improved human rights, while others result in worse human rights. I conclude by calling for further future study into these treaty actions.

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Notes

  1. In this article, I use “ratification” to describe binding commitment to human rights treaties, although I note that accession and succession are similarly binding actions. For the purposes of this article, I am concerned only with the fact states committed via legally binding action to human rights treaties and do not get into the legal distinctions across the types of legally binding commitment.

  2. Throughout this article, I refer to actions as post-commitment actions to denote discussion of all legal actions made following ratification and to distinguish from prior research/arguments/findings that examined a subset of these treaty actions as RUDs (Reservations, Understandings, and Declarations).

  3. Core UN human rights treaties identified by the UN are the ICCPR, CERD, ICESCR, CAT, CEDAW, CRC, CED, CRPD, and CMW

  4. Understandings are dropped from PCA model analysis since only five understandings were made relative to the ICCPR. One understanding came from Argentina and the other four from the USA. When included in the models, STATA drops the variable.

  5. Understandings are included when analyzing RUDs as a collapsed category.

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  1. Arizona State University, School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Glendale, USA

    Audrey L. Comstock

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Comstock, A.L. Adjusted Ratification: Post-Commitment Actions to UN Human Rights Treaties. Hum Rights Rev 20, 23–45 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12142-018-0536-0

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