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The United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: Does it make a difference in human rights behavior?

By Linda Camp Keith

Presented by Amina Khan

Essence of the Article This article tests empirically whether becoming a party to this

international treaty (and its Optional Protocol) has an observable impact on the state party’s actual behavior.

The hypothesis is tested across 178 countries over an eighteen year period (1976-1993) and across four different measures of state human rights behavior.

Initial bivariate analyses demonstrate some statistically significant differences between the behavior of state parties and the behavior of non-party states.

When the analysis is multivariate, in which factors known to affect human rights are controlled, the impact of the covenant and its optional protocol disappears altogether

Overall, this study suggests that it may be overly optimistic to expect that being a party to this international covenant will produce an observable direct impact.

Background The UN Charter lists amongst its purposes ‘promoting and encouraging respect

for human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion.’

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted in 1948 gave way to the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which was opened for signature in 1966 and went into force in 1976.

This covenant on civil and political rights established a Human Rights Committee of 18 elected experts who study reports of the individual state’s efforts to guarantee rights included in the covenant and make recommendations.

If states have joined the Optional Protocol, the committee may make recommendations based on complaints from individuals.

As of December 2008, the covenant has been signed by 174 member states. 8 member states have signed, but have not ratified the treaty (e.g. China), 21 states have neither signed nor ratified the treaty

Levels of Analysis

States that are parties to the covenant would be more respectful of human rights than non party states

After becoming a party, the behavior of the state would improve over its own former behavior

Measures of Human Rights Behavior

The Covenant protects a total of 27 rights categories Political scientists have developed two standards-based indices

Freedom House Political and Civil Rights indices Stohl et al.’s Personal Integrity measure - this includes a narrow set of

human rights violations: political imprisonment, torture, and killings or disappearances. Data is obtained from annual Amnesty International reports and US State Department Country Reports on Human Rights.

Data Analysis & Results Party states will respect human rights more than non party states Calculated mean for party states and non party states on each measure of

human rights behavior A t-test of statistical significance was performed on the differences of means

of the two groups When the means were compared, it was found on average, that the party

states have levels of political and civil freedom which are almost one level better than non-party states

States that are parties to the more stringent Optional Protocol exhibit the best levels of freedom

Each of the difference of means is statistically significant at least at 0.001 level

The analysis supports the hypothesis that party states behave better than non party states

However, results for the Personal Integrity Rights measures, do not clearly support the hypothesis perhaps due to derogation by party states

Data Analysis & Results Second set of analysis to test whether there is an observable

difference in a state’s behavior after becoming a party to the treaty

A t-test of the difference of means on each human rights score was conducted to compare state party’s behavior during the two years prior to becoming a party and 4 subsequent periods after joining

In none of the comparisons did the states achieve a statistically significant higher score in the years after joining than before

Clearly, this test does not provide support for the hypothesis that human rights behavior improves significantly after becoming a party

Multivariate Analysis Using a Pooled

Cross-Sectional Time-Series Model Bivariate tests cannot account for the possibility of a distorting

influence from other variables Testing across time and space The model includes 7 independent variables that are statistically

significant and are important factors in state personal integrity abuse

Political democracy, population size, economic development, civil war experience, international war experience, British cultural influence, military control, Leftist regime

As a whole, results offer little support for the hypothesis that states which become parties respect human rights more than those who have not

Conclusion

It may be overly optimistic to expect that being a party to this treaty will produce an observable impact

Results are consistent with the assertions that the treaty’s implementation is too weak

But, treaty’s impact may be more of an indirect than a direct process

Nonetheless, overall human rights protection among the treaty’s parties is no better than in non-party states

Implications What is the importance of such a covenant?

The ability to declare international norms of human rights

The ability to generate information about state human rights policies and actual behavior

The ability to direct world attention to abuses Limited implementation power based on voluntary

compliance

Counterfactual Exercise

What would happen if there was no such covenant?