The UN Human Rights Accountability Mechanisms: The UN Treaty Bodies

This webinar is the first in a series of three to introduce participants to the key accountability mechanisms established through the UN to hold states accountable to their human rights commitments. The UN Treaty Bodies are committees of international experts tasked with ensuring governments abide by the human rights treaties they have ratified. Each government is charged with reporting on a regular basis to these committees on how they are implementing the human rights treaties. The Treaty Bodies also rely on alternative sources including through National Human Rights Institutions and ‘shadow’ reports from civil society. Based on all these sources, they issue a set of recommendations to governments, known as Concluding Observations.

This year is the 50th anniversary of Australia’s accession to the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), and the subsequent adoption of the Racial Discrimination Act that implements its provisions in domestic law. March 21 is the International Day of the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Professor Chung from the CERD Committee provided an overview of the work of her Committee and outlined the way that States have reacted to its findings and their positive impacts. Australia is planning to submit a combined 21st and 22nd CERD periodic report this year. Darren Dick from the Australian Human Rights Commission outlined the role of the Commission in the reporting process and spoke about the issues that have been consistently raised by the Committee in relation to Australia.

Speakers

Professor Chinsung Chung is a member of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. She is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Sociology at Seoul National University in the Republic of Korea (South Korea). From 2008 to 2013 Professor Chung was an elected member of the UN Human Rights Council Advisory Committee. In 2005 she established the Korea Center for United Nations Human Rights Policy and has been its President since 2014. In 2013 Professor Chung was awarded the Republic of Korea Human Rights Award.

Darren Dick is Senior Policy Executive at the Australian Human Rights Commission where he has worked since 1998. He is leading the Commission’s Free and Equal national human rights reform project, and oversees the development of a National Anti-Racism Framework. In his role as Director of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner’s team, he was responsible for the production of the annual Social Justice Report and the Native Title Report to Federal Parliament, and has played a leading role in developing the Close the Gap approach to Indigenous disadvantage. Darren was awarded the Public Service Medal in 2022 for outstanding contribution to national policy on human rights.

Moderator

Patrick Earle is the Executive Director of the Diplomacy Training Program.