Zoom Special reports
The United Nations Human Rights Treaties
Our country is among the states with a high level of acceptance of the international human rights law. It follows a policy of full acceptance of the core international human right treaties ever since its independence in 1991. Most importantly, its Constitution, Article 118, provides that the international treaties are part of the national legal system and are directly applicable in national courts.
International human rights law, based currently on eight “core” treaties, came into existence with the Universal Declaration for Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations on 10 December 1948. For the first time the Declaration set in a single document the “common standard of achievement for all people and nations” of a range of basic civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights that all should enjoy by the virtue of their status as human beings. Although not legally binding itself, the Declaration was widely accepted and has laid ground for a line of binding treaties which gave effect to the declared recognition, respect and protection of the human rights.
By becoming party to international treaties, through ratification, the State assumes obligations and duties under international law to respect, to protect and to fulfil human rights. The Governments undertake to put into place domestic measures and legislation compatible with their treaty obligations and duties. Each of the core treaties has established a committee of independent experts to monitor the implementation of the treaty provisions by its States parties. Some of the treaties are supplemented by optional protocols dealing with specific concerns or providing for individual complaints to ensure that international human rights standards are indeed respected, implemented, and enforced at the local level.
To fully understand State’s obligation under the treaties, one must look at all the treaties to which the State became party, as a whole. Macedonia is currently party six and has signed the two most recent of the eight core treaties, on the rights of persons with disabilities and on enforced disappearances. It is also party to all the optional protocols, except for the latest to the convention on economic, social and cultural rights.
The first international “core” human rights treaty, adopted in 1965, deals with the phenomenon of racial discrimination in a way that prohibits distinctions based on race, colour, descent and national and ethnic origin and details obligations of States to refrain, combat and ensure redress against such acts. Two major treaties, the covenants on civil and political, and on economic, social and cultural rights, adopted in 1966, emphasize the interdependence of all human rights, prohibit discrimination, define permissible limitations to the rights and the right of people to self-determination. Each within its scope further includes a catalogue of substantive provisions that elaborate the rights contained in the Universal Declaration, such as the right to freely take part in public affairs, not to be subjected to torture, the right to fair trial, association, expression, or the right to work, social security, education, health and to participate in cultural life, to name a few. Due to their fundamental nature, together with the Declaration they are known as the “International Bill of Human Rights”.
The fourth treaty, adopted in 1979, addresses the specific phenomenon of discrimination of women on the grounds of sex by dealing with a range of programmatic and policy aspects of the problem. The next, adopted in 1984, is the convention against torture which reiterates the absolute prohibition of torture and further elaborates legal schemes for the prevention and punishment of such acts.
The first treaty to deal with the rights of a specific group of people was the convention on the rights of the child in 1989. It restated the human rights to the particular circumstances of children with regard to their protection, but also added groundbreaking perspectives of the child and civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. Macedonia is party to this and to all the above five treaties and their respective optional protocols.
The seventh treaty, dealing with the rights of a particular group in need of protection, the migrant workers and their families, was adopted in 1990. It applies to the entire migration process and both to all and to “documented” migrants and to sending and receiving States. The country is not a party to it.
The eighth and the most recent treaty, adopted in 2006, elaborates the requirements to guarantee the human rights of persons with disabilities. In doing so, the treaty moves away from a focus on certain physical or mental conditions towards people’s humanity, dignity and diversity by ensuring free and informed consent for medical treatment, respecting legal capacity of persons with disabilities, accommodating the specific situation of an employee in the work place or a voter during elections, among the other. The country has signed it in 2007, but has not ratified it yet.
The work on extending the normative framework continues. In 2006, one more treaty was adopted that will come in force after it is ratified by the required number of twenty States: the convention on the protection of all persons from enforced disappearances which affirms that enforced disappearances constitute a crime against humanity when practiced in a widespread or systematic manner. In the same spirit of acceptance, our country has signed it in 2007 by which it demonstrated its intention to ratify and make it part of its national legislation. The latest ground-breaking development was in 2008, when the optional protocol to the covenant on economic, social and cultural rights was adopted, provided for individual complaints against a State party, an issue discussed for decades due to the specificity of the state obligations for progressive and not immediate realisation of these rights. The country has not yet expressed its intentions regarding acceding to this treaty.
For more information, readers are invited to visit www.ohchr.org.
Prepared by Silva Pesic,
National Human Rights Adviser at the UN Resident Coordinator’s Office.
