Abstract
This study investigates the so-called "thematic approach" as a method available to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights to take cognizance of and to react upon violations of human rights worldwide. To this end, three different thematic procedures, the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, the Special Rapporteur
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on Torture and the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, have been subjected to detailed scrutiny. The analysis takes as a point of departure the apparent contradiction between the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, where human rights have been proclaimed as one of the Organisation's main purposes and where, at the same time, the principle of non-intervention in the domestic affairs of a State seems to preclude its effective implementation.
The study shows how the practice of the political organs of the United Nations, particularly the practice of the General Assembly, ECOSOC, the Commission on Human Rights and its Sub-Commission, gradually shaped the meaning and scope of the principle of non-intervention, confirming the relativity of the concept of domestic jurisdiction and establishing - through ECOSOC Resolutions 1235 and 1503 - essential human rights monitoring competences for the Commission on Human Rights. Subsequently, it shows how the Commission on Human Rights used these competences to establish so-called country-specific procedures to study and report on the human rights situation in one specific country and how the selectivity inherent to this method led it to take a different approach in 1980 as it established its first thematic procedure to study one particular phenomenon of human rights violations worldwide: the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances.
The analysis of the three selected thematic procedures reviews in detail their establishment, the development of working methods and techniques such as routine transmissions, urgent appeals, on-site visits and annual reports and concludes that since 1980 thematic procedures have managed to establish, consolidate and institutionalise their working methods within the United Nations system of human rights protection. At the same time, it also concludes that the effectiveness - the ability "to produce a desired effect" - of the thematic approach must be deemed extremely limited.
In the light of these two conclusions, the study undertakes to initiate a discussion concerning the supposed changing nature of the international legal order: a move away from the so-called "statist presumption" of international law towards a vision of international law governing a constitutional order presenting more and more hierarchical features. The author concludes that, notwithstanding the desirability of achieving this objective, it is premature to assume such a change of paradigm.
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