The Power of Engagement: Assessing the Effectiveness of Cooperation between UN Human Rights Treaty Bodies and National Human Rights Institutions

Abstract

The United Nations Human Rights Treaty Bodies are a central pillar of the international human rights protection system, essential to the independent, quasi-judicial monitoring of state parties’ respect for and implementation of ratified UN human rights treaties. National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) are part of the state’s administration but independent from it, acting as a bridge between international norms and local implementation, designed to ensure the state’s compliance with its international legal obligations. Since 1993, the UN has recognized NHRIs as crucial partners in monitoring states’ compliance with international human rights treaty standards. In doing so, the UN has gradually expanded engagement opportunities to NHRIs across the Treaty Body system’s different procedures. Almost thirty years later, however, this inter-institutional engagement is far from systematized. By unpacking the black box of inter-institutional cooperation between the international and domestic mechanisms of human rights monitoring, this thesis explores the engagement between Treaty Bodies and NHRIs in the context of the State Reporting procedure. In doing so, it examines whether this dyadic relationship and cooperation is effective in facilitating the implementation of human rights treaties through a combination of goal-based and empirical approaches.