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23 Hum. Rts. Q. 483 (2001)
The Impact of the United Nations Human Rights Treaties on the Domestic Level

handle is hein.journals/hurq23 and id is 495 raw text is: HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY The Impact of the United Nations Human Rights Treaties on the Domestic Level Christof Heyns* Frans Viljoen** I. INTRODUCTION The success or failure of any international human rights system should be evaluated in accordance with its impact on human rights practices on the domestic (country) level. At the beginning of the new millennium, it is clear that the concept of human rights is widely accepted as the idea of our time. The conceptual battle is over, and the focus has shifted to the implementation of human rights. Universal ratification of the main United Nations (UN) human rights treaties might be appearing on the horizon, but ratification in itself is largely a formal, and in some cases an empty, gesture.1 The challenge now is to ensure that the promises contained in the treaties * Christof Heyns is the director of the Centre for Human Rights and professor of human rights law, Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria. He holds the degrees MA, LL.B. (Pretoria), LL.M. (Yale), and Ph.D. (University of the Witwatersrand). ** Frans Viljoen is a member of the Centre for Human Rights and professor of law at the Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria. He holds the degrees MA, LL.B. (Pretoria), LL.M. (Cambridge) and LL.D. (Pretoria). Prof Heyns and Viljoen edit the annual Human Rights Law in Africa Series and have published extensively on human rights issues in Africa. 1. If universal ratification is understood to mean that every member of the United Nations has ratified each one of the six main United Nations human rights treaties, then 80% of universal ratification had been achieved by 1 July 1999 (a total of 905 ratifications had been achieved out of a possible 1,128). If universal ratification is understood to mean that the six treaties have been ratified by all member states of the UN, and all these countries have, in addition, accepted the individual complaints procedures that are possible under three of these treaties, while not excluding the confidential inquiry procedure that is possible under CAT, then 62.7% of universal ratification had been achieved by the same date (1,179 ratifications, declarations and non-exclusion of art. 20 of CAT out of a possible 1,880). Human Rights Quarterly 23 (2001) 483-535 © 2001 by The Johns Hopkins University Press

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