The Issue of Futility of Creating World Court of Human Rights

2017

RUDN Journal of Law, Vol 21, Iss 1, Pp 83-101 (2017)

At present moment many ideas on improvement of the activities of mechanisms of universal human rights system are put forward. The creation of the world court of human rights is regarded as one of the most ambitious among these ideas. It is supposed that the establishment of this judicial body would solve difficulties facing this system, including its main component - human rights treaty body system. However, it seems that this suggestion should be taken carefully, since it is crucial to avoid decrease in the effectiveness of the work of the universal human rights system in the result of the changes that would be brought to its activities by the creation of world court of human rights. In this respect in frames of this article the author analyses the proposal of creation of world court of human rights in order to determine its advantages and disadvantages in terms of its capability to enhance effectiveness of functioning of universal human rights system, including human rights treaty bodies. The author identifies key stages in the history of formation of this idea, paying special attention to its development in the context of the process of strengthening the human rights treaty body system as well as determines and critically analyses the main arguments justifying the necessity and effectiveness of creation of world court of human rights. On the basis of the analysis, the author, using arguments of conceptual and practical character, justifies the futility of this initiative at present stage of development of universal human rights system. Considering that the non-amendment of the legal foundations of the functioning of the human rights treaty bodies constitutes the basic requirement of the ongoing treaty body strengthening process, a more effective, than the creation of world court of human rights, mechanism of improving the human rights treaty body system is proposed. This mechanism provides the adoption of measures targeted at strengthening the procedures of the human rights treaty bodies, improving the quality of their recommendations in terms of argumentation and legal clarity. Such an approach is more flexible and has chances to get more support on the side of the treaty bodies themselves, who consider the issues of their competence being most sensitive, as well as on the side of the States Parties.

article

English
Russian

Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University), 2017.

международное право, права человека, универсальная правозащитная система, система договорных органов по правам человека, всемирный международный суд по правам человека, укрепление системы договорных органов по правам человека, Совет ООН по правам человека, Универсальный периодический обзор, Law