Other Core International Human Rights Treaties

There are currently nine core international human rights treaties. All of them contain strong non-discriminatory clauses ensuring applicability of many provisions to migrants. When a country ratifies one of these treaties, it assumes a legal obligation to implement the rights recognized in that treaty. States Parties have an obligation to submit regular reports to the monitoring committee set up under that treaty. Governments collect information from their relevant ministries and administrative units in order to draft the initial and subsequent periodic reports. This exercise prompts them to take stock and analyse their legislation and practices in relation to a given treaty. In addition to the reporting procedure, some of the treaty bodies may perform additional monitoring functions through three other mechanisms: the inquiry procedure, the examination of inter-State complaints and the examination of individual complaints. This system of human rights monitoring is common to most of the UN human rights treaties and is operated by the treaty monitoring bodies. The different Committees of the TMB oversee and monitor the implementation of rights granted in the various conventions by the reporting of States. Committee members are nationals of States Parties to the relevant conventions. They serve on the committees in their personal capacity and not as country representatives. In elections, consideration has to be given to equitable geographical distribution as well as to the principal legal systems.