Question Guide to the Article on The United Nations Human Rights Treaty System 1.

Introduction: What do the seven core human rights treaties do? What are the obligations of state parties? What makes the treaty system function? 2. Part 1. What were some of the features of the development of mechanisms for the protection of human rights P3. 3. What are the seven main human rights treaties and what do the Committees do? You can answer this by reference to the article itself combined with responding to the Web questions on the OLT Site about the treaty system. These questions can be found under Weeks 2 and 3. 4. What is the status of the UDHR? - P4-5 5. What obligations does the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination impose on States? P5 6. What are the two optional protocols to the ICCPR and what is meant by the term optional? You can find out via the articles and the web questions on OLT. 7. What is meant by the principle of progressive realization as applied to both the ICCPR and the ICESCR? This is an important principle outlined on P8. 8. What are some of the key provisions of CEDAW listed on P9. 9. Does the Convention against Torture CAT allow for torture in some circumstances? And what is meant by non-refoulment? Worth thinking about in the context of our discussions and video and the non-refoulment principle is very relevant to Australias treatment of asylum seekers. 10. What are the Four General Principles for implementing childrens rights? P12 11. You need to fully understand the comments on P14 about how to read the treaties and appreciate that even though they are separate legal documents they should be seen in a combined, complimentary way.

12. What are the obligations imposed on a State which is party to a human rights treaty? This is very important and covered on P15. 13. What do the treaty committees or bodies do? P16

14. Note, you should search the web sites of the seven treaty bodies as well as reading the article. The reason for this is that the various treaty body web sites will be completely up to date. Go to: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/Pages/HumanRightsBodies.aspx 15. P19 What does the reporting process allow a State to do? See

16. Note, for the purpose of the exam, you do not have to know the timelines nor the details of the reporting cycle. You should read this however as it gives you a good idea on how the system is supposed to operate. 17. On P25 there is a description of the treaties that allow individual people to make complaints to the various committees. This is an important human rights mechanism. I will talk about this at the lecture. But, you should know which treaties allow for individual complaints. 18. Note, for the purpose of the exam, you do not have to know the procedures which are in place to deal with individual complaints. But you should read this to get an idea of how this is supposed to work. P25-27 19. You do not need to know from Ps37 onwards dealing with definition of terms. You can use this as a reference if you come across terms that you dont understand. Much of it is legal UN technical jargon meaningful for insiders and mostly irrelevant for the rest of the world.