When the Committee of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) has to take decisions in connection with state reports submitted under article 9 of CERD, it encounters problems that do not arise when it is dealing with individual communications under article 14. This chapter begins by contrasting the ways in which the Committee sets about its work under these two articles. It notes that state reports, and the consideration of them, sometimes introduce issues that are marginal to the Convention and which observers might consider political rather than legal. The Committee then has to exercise a delicate judgment when deciding where the line should be drawn. Its difficulties in reaching decisions on such issues reflect the difficulties of decision-taking in the United Nations as a whole.

Under article 14 of the Convention a state may make a declaration that it recognises the competence of the Committee to receive and consider communications from individuals or groups of individuals within its jurisdiction claiming to be victims of a violation by that state of one or more rights set forth in the Convention. If the Committee finds a violation of the Convention, the state should revise its law or practice in the light of the Committee's opinion. The Committee has considered ten communications. It does so in private session, but in the author's experience it has nonetheless approached its task judicially. That the decisions of courts are enforced by the states that establish them gives their proceedings a different character. There are still significant parallels. This chapter discusses the process by which a treaty body's decisions are reached rather than the status of these decisions.