Ratification

Abstract: The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child in November, 1989, bringing to a close ten years of debate and discussion over the merits of the project as well as the content of its main provisions. Although some representatives expressed misgivings about the content of several articles of the convention, it was adopted by a broad consensus among the member states of the United Nations. In fact, in less than one year, by September, 1990, the convention had been ratified by more than twenty countries, the threshold figure established by Article 49 of the convention, and it entered into force. This set in motion the process for the election of the ten-member Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the body that has been charged with implementing the convention, in February, 1991, and it is scheduled to begin functioning in the fall of 1991. As recently as March, 1991, the United Nations Secretary-General reported to the states parties that 71 states had either ratified or acceded to the convention and that almost 60 other states had signed it. By June, 1991, the ratification of the convention by Belgium brought the total of states parties to over 90.

Abstract: Do countries comply with the requirements of human rights treaties that they join? Are these treaties effective in changing states' behavior for the better? This Article addresses these questions through a large-scale quantitative analysis of the relationship between human rights treaties and countries' human rights practices. The analysis relies on a database encompassing 166 nations over a nearly forty-year period in five areas of human rights law. The analysis finds that although the practices of countries that have ratified human rights treaties are generally better than those of countries that have not, noncompliance with treaty obligations appears common. More paradoxically, controlling for other factors that affect practices, it appears that treaty ratification is not infrequently associated with worse practices than otherwise expected. These findings can be explained in part, the Article contends, by the dual nature of treaties as both instrumental and expressive instruments. Treaties not only create binding law, but also declare or express the position of countries that ratify them. Because human rights treaties tend to be weakly monitored and enforced, countries that ratify may enjoy the benefits of this expression-including, perhaps, reduced pressure for improvements in practices-without bearing significant costs. This does not mean that human rights treaties do not have any positive influence, but simply that these positive effects may sometimes be offset or even outweighed by treaties' less beneficial effects. The Article concludes by considering better ways to help ensure that human rights treaties improve the lives of those they are meant to help.

Abstract: Do countries comply with the requirements of human rights treaties that they join? Are these treaties effective in changing states' behavior for the better? This Article addresses these questions through a large-scale quantitative analysis of the relationship between human rights treaties and countries' human rights practices. The analysis relies on a database encompassing 166 nations over a nearly forty-year period in five areas of human rights law. The analysis finds that although the practices of countries that have ratified human rights treaties are generally better than those of countries that have not, noncompliance with treaty obligations appears common. More paradoxically, controlling for other factors that affect practices, it appears that treaty ratification is not infrequently associated with worse practices than otherwise expected. These findings can be explained in part, the Article contends, by the dual nature of treaties as both instrumental and expressive instruments. Treaties not only create binding law, but also declare or express the position of countries that ratify them. Because human rights treaties tend to be weakly monitored and enforced, countries that ratify may enjoy the benefits of this expression-including, perhaps, reduced pressure for improvements in practices-without bearing significant costs. This does not mean that human rights treaties do not have any positive influence, but simply that these positive effects may sometimes be offset or even outweighed by treaties' less beneficial effects. The Article concludes by considering better ways to help ensure that human rights treaties improve the lives of those they are meant to help.

Abstract: According to indicators of political repression currently used by scholars, human rights practices have not improved over the past 35 years, despite the spread of human rights norms, better monitoring, and the increasing prevalence of electoral democracy. I argue that this empirical pattern is not an indication of stagnating human rights practices. Instead, it reflects a systematic change in the way monitors, like Amnesty International and the U.S. State Department, encounter and interpret information about abuses. The standard of accountability used to assess state behaviors becomes more stringent as monitors look harder for abuse, look in more places for abuse, and classify more acts as abuse. In this article, I present a new, theoretically informed measurement model, which generates unbiased estimates of repression using existing data. I then show that respect for human rights has improved over time and that the relationship between human rights respect and ratification of the UN Convention Against Torture is positive, which contradicts findings from existing research.