Insincere Commitments: Human Rights Treaties, Abusive States, and Citizen Activism

2. Patterns of Commitment

Which countries grant their citizens the right to file complaints before the UN treaty bodies? Which countries merely ratify human rights treaties to avoid UN intrusion into their domestic affairs? In chapter 1 we considered theories explaining commitment and compliance. Each of those theories makes predictions about which types of governments should be most inclined to ratify treaties. Social learning models imply that established democratic governments should lead by example and make bold commitments to human rights.Cost/benefit models also imply that those with the best practices and least to lose will be the most likely to ratify treaties. Still other models of commitment point to newly democratizing governments as those most inclined to commit. This chapter explores trends in treaty ratification and patterns associated with ratification of individual petition mechanisms.The chapter also provides an overview of the frequency of use of the individual complaint procedures attached to the following treaties: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, and the Convention Against Torture. The findings call into question some basic assumptions about which types of governments grant their citizens the ability to file claims before the UN treaty bodies, under what conditions they will do so, and which types of governments are most likely to be called to defend their human rights practices at the UN by their own citizens. Data Sources The data used in this chapter come from a variety of sources.The United Nations Treaty Series (UNTS) possesses ratification records for every state covering all Patterns of Commitment 41 2 42 Chapter 2 treaties and Individual Petition Mechanisms (IPMs).1 The Polity IV project provides detailed data on regime characteristics and transitions.2 Polity IV data are used here to capture regime type (democracy, moderate democracy, and autocracy) and regime persistence (established and transitioning). Geographic regions are generated using World Bank regional classifications.3 Treaties and Individual Petition Mechanisms Governments have a few options when it comes to United Nations human rights treaties—ignore them and hope that the global human rights community will not notice, have the chief executive sign the treaty to signify support without bringing the treaty to a vote in the national legislature, ratify the treaty with a vote in the national legislature, or ratify the treaty and accept UN oversight for domestic treaty implementation. In short, the options are: ignore, sign, ratify, or ratify and grant citizens the ability to file individual petitions before the UN (table 2.1). Absent the vocal opposition of domestic or global advocacy groups, the first of these options is costless for most governments. The government ignores the existence of a treaty and pursues domestic human rights policies that reflect its preferences. From an international law perspective, signing a treaty does not suggest that it will be implemented domestically. Rather, signature merely means that a government agrees in principle with the essence of a treaty (Slomanson 2007, 362). In fact, signing a human rights treaty amid the fanfare of a national press conference may elevate domestic support for the government, while requiring absolutely no policy changes. Ratification, which requires approval by the national legislature in most countries , means that the treaty has force of law domestically and citizens should expect their government to alter their domestic human rights practices in compliance with the treaty. Ratification should, at least in theory, be a costlier commitment than signature because it implies that the government will endeavor to comply with the terms of the treaty (Shaw 2003, 818).The final option, ratifying the treaty and accepting UN oversight by ratifying an optional protocol, or making a positive declaration about an article, which grants citizens the right to petition the UN, is the most potentially intrusive to states’human rights practices. After ratifying the Table 2.1 Government Options with Respect to UN Human RightsTreaties • Ignore • Sign • Ratify • Ratify and grant citizens the ability to file petitions before the UN Patterns of Commitment 43 treaty and accepting the oversight of the relevant UN human rights committee, there is an expectation that the terms of the treaty will be passed into law, and where violations of the treaty’s terms occur, citizens will have the opportunity to appeal directly to the UN. While the first two options (ignore or sign) do not oblige states...