Interim report on the impact of the work of the United Nations Human Rights Treaty bodies on national courts and tribunal

Abstract

1. At the London Conference of the Association in 2000 the Executive Council approved the proposal of the Committee that the next stage of its work would be a study of the impact of the United Nations human rights treaty bodies established under the principal United Nations human rights treaties. The Committee had proposed that the initial stage of its project would be to focus primarily on the impact that the output of these bodies (in particular their “findings”) has had on the work of national courts and tribunals, with a view to examining subsequently the impact of the work of the treaty bodies in other contexts at the domestic level. 2. The principal purposes of the study are to document the extent to which the work of the treaty bodies had begun to have an impact on the work of national courts and tribunals, to identify the factors that contribute to the use by courts and tribunals of this material, and to encourage further utilisation of the international sources by courts, tribunals and advocates by disseminating information about how they were already being used. 3. This report is a preliminary survey of the use made by national courts and tribunals of the output of the treaty bodies.2 It does not purport to be an exhaustive study of the many instances in which national courts have referred to or drawn on the work of the treaty bodies, either in its coverage of jurisdictions or of cases within particular jurisdictions; rather it endeavours to illustrate the different ways in which national courts have utilised that material and the principal legal issues which have been discussed, on the basis of the examples identified by the members of the Committee and others who have contributed information for the study. Th is interim study represents a sampling of case law from more than a dozen jurisdictions (and refers predominantly to English-language case law), the goal being to illustrate the range of issues that have come before domestic courts. The Committee hopes that the study will stimulate further documentation of the use made by national courts and tribunals of international material. 4. While the Committee considered that it would be worthwhile to study the impact of the work of the treaty bodies at the national level in other areas (such as the work of legislatures), it was felt that the study at this stage should be primarily focused on courts and tribunals, and similar adjudicative or quasi-judicial institutions (such as Ombuds procedures in some countries). The suggestion was also made that the study include references to the use made of treaty body output by international courts and tribunals. The present interim study includes a number of references to such cases, but a more detailed listing of those instances has been deferred to the next stage of the study. 5. The Committee proposes that this interim study will be further developed into a more comprehensive report for the 2004 Conference of the Association, and that this final report will document many more instances of the use of the work of the treaty bodies by domestic courts and tribunals, as well as by other domestic institutions.