The Domestic Impact and Effectiveness of the Process of State Reporting under UN Human Rights Treaties in the Netherlands, New Zealand and Finland: Paper-pushing or policy prompting?

The number of international human rights treaties and monitoring mechanisms has grown considerably over the past decades. States are increasingly confronted with criticism as to their domestic human rights record. What is the effect of all these treaties, as well as the monitoring and criticism? Do they lead to changes and improvements? This book addresses such questions. It investigates the domestic impact and effectiveness of the process of State reporting under the six main UN human rights treaties in the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Finland. The focus is on the effectiveness of the recommendations of the treaty bodies and the extent to which policy or legislation is changed as a result of these recommendations. The book provides insights into the factors at both the national and international level which contribute to the effectiveness of the treaty bodies' recommendations. It is thorough in its approach, because it is based on an extensive analysis of a wide variety of documents, as well as 175 interviews with various domestic human rights stakeholders in the three countries. This includes government officials, NGO representatives, members of parliament, lawyers, judges, academics, and representatives from human rights and Ombudsman institutions. The book discusses a large number of concrete examples of effective recommendations of the treaty bodies to illustrate the major conclusions. (Series: School of Human Rights Research - Vol. 63)