The Procedures Before the UN Human Rights Treaty Bodies: Divergence or Convergence?

The seven core UN human rights treaties are each supervised by an expert committee. This book is the first to explore whether and to what extent the Committees supervisory procedures display similarities and tend to converge. In four parts, the reporting procedure, procedures related to the reporting procedure, the individual complaints procedure and the inquiry procedure are studied. This study thus makes an important contribution to the on-going effort within the UN to harmonize and streamline the reporting procedures, and will be equally useful for devising and operationalizing new complaints and inquiry procedures. This book will prove its relevance to beginners and experts in the field alike. For the former it offers a comprehensive and accessible overview of the current functioning of each of the treaty bodies. For the latter it provides a systematic comparison of similarities and differences, both from a static and dynamic perspective.