Recourse to Human Rights Treaty Bodies for Monitoring of the Refugee Convention

Abstract

Nearly all human rights conventions adopt the treaty body model to monitor states parties' implementation of their treaty obligations. This monitoring mechanism provides for a quasi judicial committee, far detached from sites of many of the human rights violations it reviews. On the other hand, there is no such treaty body for the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. Rather, there is the UNHCR; a large operational agency with offices all over the world, including in sites of refugee emergencies. Effective monitoring of human rights conventions would seem to require a number of factors, including independence and transparency. Legitimate monitoring would have to be strong, and would have to be seen to be strong. Criticism raised in recent years of UNHCR's monitoring methods are largely based on frustration with these points. This paper will examine these issues, and also examine whether recourse to the treaty bodies really provides an adequate remedy for refugee rights. The argument of this paper is that while the UNHCR's monitoring of the Refugee Convention is problematic in many respects, the monitoring of refugee issues by the treaty bodies is in many ways incomplete and inconsistent, and that the treaty body model does not provide refugee advocates with a comprehensive solution.