The more the better? The complementarity of United Nations institutions in the fight against torture
| Author | Valentina Carraro |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/09240519221131668 |
| Published date | 01 December 2022 |
| Date | 01 December 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
The more the better? The
complementarity of United
Nations institutions in the
fight against torture
Valentina Carraro
Global Transformations and Governance Challenges at Leiden University,
The Hague, Netherlands
Abstract
When the United Nations Universal Periodic Review was established in 2007, it was stressed that
it should complement the work of the United Nations treaty bodies. At the same time, fears were
expressed that similarities between the two procedures might lead to potentially problematic
duplications or contradictions among them. To shed light on whether this is the case, this article
devises a framework to assess the degree to which human rights bodies provide duplicating or
contradicting recommendations to States. Focusing on the case of torture, it creates an original
database of recommendations delivered to 14 countries in the years 2012–2016. Results show
that duplications are frequent and provide opportunities to States to use the Universal Periodic
Review to contest the implementation of treaty bodies’recommendations. Contradictions are lim-
ited, although when they occur, they create room for States to selectively choose which recom-
mendations to implement.
Keywords
United Nations, torture, treaty monitoring, human rights, regime complexity
1. INTRODUCTION
When the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) was established in 2007 as a peer review process
wherein United Nations (UN) Member States examine each other’s human rights performance,
great emphasis was placed on the fact that it should not duplicate, but rather complement the
Corresponding author:
Dr. ValentinaCarraro is an Assistant Professor in Global Transformations and Governance Challenges at Leiden University,
The Hague, Netherlands.
Emails: v.carraro@fgga.leidenuniv.nl; v.carraro@fsw.leidenuniv.nl
Article
Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights
2022, Vol. 40(4) 354–378
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/09240519221131668
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work of the UN treaty bodies.
1
Treaty bodies are expert-based, semi-judicial mechanisms that
provide authoritative interpretations of international human rights law, while the UPR is a political,
State-led mechanism whereby States deliver recommendations to each other. Despite their differ-
ences, a partial overlap between the functions they perform caused several observers to wonder
whether the UPR would merely duplicate the work performed by the treaty bodies or, in the worst-
case scenario, even contradict or undermine it.
2
What could be the impact of repetitions and contra-
dictions on State compliance with the recommendations received? Would repetitions bring any
added value? In the case of contradictions, would States follow the expert advice of the treaty
bodies or rather the UPR recommendations?
Despite such widespread worries, no empirical research has been conducted thus far to assess
whether the UPR encroaches on the work of the treaty bodies, nor on the consequences of possible
overlaps for the effectiveness of the UN human rights machinery. This article takes a first step to
explore this matter, by developing and empirically applying a framework to assess the extent to
which the UPR and treaty bodies deliver duplicating or contradicting output. In doing so, it is
the first to develop an original framework to categorise recommendations and decisions by partially
overlapping mechanisms, based on the extent to which they raise the same issues and propose the
same solutions. The categorisation is developed in a way that makes it relevant not only for the UPR
and treaty bodies, but also for the study of overlapping activities by other monitoring mechanisms,
within and beyond the UN context or the human rights domain. In addition, this article identifies
patterns in the way States respond to recommendations that either duplicate or contradict each
other. To support this analysis, the article employs the empirical case of torture and other forms
of ill-treatment, as further discussed in Section 3.
3
Specifically, it focuses on recommendations
on torture by:
(a) the main treaty body dealing with issues of torture, namely the Committee against Torture
(CATc);
(b) three other treaty bodies that regularly raise issues of relevance for the mandate of the CATc,
namely: the Human Rights Committee (HRCttee), the Committee on the Elimination of
Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and the Committee on the Rights of the Child
(CRC); and
(c) the UPR.
The article is organised as follows. Section 2 presents key background information and briefly
reviews the existing literature on the UPR and the treaty bodies. Section 3 provides the context
for the case study of torture by clarifying the concept of ‘torture’and the extent to which the
norm of torture is contested by States. Section 4 assesses the complementarity of the human
rights mechanisms and proposes a categorisation of recommendations and decisions by these
1. UNGA Res 60/251 (15 March 2006) UN Doc A/RES/60/251.
2. Felice D Gaer, ‘A Voice Not an Echo: Universal Periodic Review and the UN Treaty Body System’(2007) 7 Human
Rights Law Review 109; Nigel Rodley, ‘UN Treaty Bodies and the Human Rights Council’in Helen Keller and Geir
Ulfstein (eds), UN Human Rights Treaty Bodies: Law and Legitimacy (Cambridge University Press 2012).
3. The article focuses on all issues falling within the scope of the CAT, which include both torture and other forms of ill-
treatment. As the CATc in its Concluding Observations does not normally make a distinction between the two, this article
follows the same approach and includes all matters that the CATc considers as falling under its purview. For the sake of
brevity, this article generally refers to ‘torture’.
Carraro 355
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