On the Causal (In)Significance of Legal Status: Assessing and Explaining Compliance with the “Views” of the UN Human Rights Treaty Bodies

• Applicant: Dr. Andreas von Staden
• Subject Area: Political Science ; Principles of Law and Jurisprudence
• Term: from 2018 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 417704617

• Final Report Year: 2024

Final Report Abstract

Against the backdrop of research on second-order compliance with the output of human rights monitoring institutions, the project closed a gap in research on the extent and causes of (non-)compliance with the globally most encompassing human rights monitoring mechanism, the individual complaints procedures (ICPs) of the treaty bodies of the nine core UN human rights conventions. To this end, an original dataset was created—the Treaty Body Views Database (TBVD)—that compiled for the first time all available information on adverse pronouncements by all treaty bodies and the state of compliance with them. In a set of preliminary inquiries into commitment to the optional treaty body ICPs we found that states that had already accepted institutionally stronger human rights monitoring mechanisms at the regional level were more likely to also accept the treaty body ICPs, an effect attributable in part to a motivation to maintain a consistent reputation. At the same time, states are typically costaverse; research into the effects of learning about the consequences of ICP activity on commitment showed that both the number of decisions against the state itself and against neighboring states decreased the probability of the acceptance of further ICPs. Qualitative research into compliance with the decisions specifically of the Committee against Torture revealed compliance to be strongly conditional on the characteristics of the respondent state (liberal democracy) and the type of decision (non-refoulement). Large-N statistical analyses across the full TBVD confirmed the higher risk of compliance of non-refoulement decisions and a positive role both of a demonstrable respect for human rights and bureaucratic effectiveness, but surprisingly, a higher risk of non-compliance with respect to financial compensation measures (possibly for managerial reasons) and no significant effect of a state’s liberal democratic credentials. To explore what role the legally non-binding status of treaty body views plays for compliance with them, we added data on compliance with the legally binding judgments of the Inter-American (IACtHR) and the European Courts of Human Rights (ECtHR) to the TBVD. Employing matching techniques to create pairs of views and judgments against the same or comparable states and with similar required remedies, legal bindingness could be shown to increase significantly the probability of full compliance, but also to have a lesser effect on the adoption of individual measures by themselves. Counterintuitively, the relative impact of legal bindingness on compliance turned out to be stronger for states with low(er) rule-of-law scores.

Publications

• Challenges and Pitfalls in Research on Compliance with the ‘Views’ of UN Human Rights Treaty Bodies: A Reply to Vera Shikhelman. European Journal of International Law, 31(2), 693-708.
  Ullmann, Andreas J. & von, Staden Andreas
  
• Implementation and compliance. Research Handbook on Implementation of Human Rights in Practice, 17-35. Edward Elgar Publishing.
  von Staden, Andreas
  
• Seeking overlap and redundancy in human rights protection: reputation, consistency and the acceptance of the UN human rights treaties’ individual communications procedures. The International Journal of Human Rights, 26(8), 1476-1502.
  von Staden, Andreas & Ullmann, Andreas J.
  
• The Conditional Effectiveness of Soft Law: Compliance with the Decisions of the Committee against Torture. Human Rights Review, 23(4), 451-478.
  von Staden, Andreas
  
• A Room Full of ‘Views’: Introducing a New Dataset to Explore Compliance with the Decisions of the UN Human Rights Treaty Bodies’ Individual Complaints Procedures. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 68(2-3), 534-561.
  Ullmann, Andreas J. & von, Staden Andreas
  
• Zur Befolgung von UN-Menschenrechtsentscheidungen. Vereinte Nationen, 71(6), 262-266.
  von Staden, Andreas
  
• ‘Compliance with UN Treaty Body Decisions: A Glass One-Third Full or Two-Thirds Empty?’ Open Global Rights Blog, September 5
  Ullmann, Andreas J.
  
• International Courts versus Non-Compliance Mechanisms. Cambridge University Press.
  Voigt, Christina & Foster, Caroline
  
• Reconsidering the costs of commitment: Learning and state acceptance of the UN human rights treaties’ individual complaint procedures. The Review of International Organizations, 20(4), 967-998.
  Ullmann, Andreas Johannes