This chapter offers an overview of the role of the expert bodies set up under the core UN human rights treaties (see, generally, G. Alfredsson, et al. (eds.), International Human Rights Monitoring Mechanisms (The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 2001); P. Alston and J. Crawford (eds.), The Future of the UN Human Rights Treaty System (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); P. Alston (ed.), The United Nations and Human Rights: A Critical Appraisal, 2nd edn. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004)). Ten such bodies are currently in operation. These are the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), which has been functioning since 1969, the Human Rights Committee (CCPR) (1976), the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) (1987), the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) (1981), the Committee against Torture (CAT) (1987), the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) (1990), the Committee on Migrant Workers (CMW) (2003), the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) (2008), the Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED) (2010), and the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (SPT) established by the 2002 Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture (OPCAT). All but one of these expert bodies have their role and composition defined in the respective treaties with which they supervise compliance. The exception is the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), which was established by Resolution 1985/17 of the Economic and Social Council (Ecosoc) and which was modelled on the Human Rights Committee created by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

Human rights have a logic of their own. This stems from the fact that they have originated in domestic constitutional documents before becoming part of the corpus of international law, and that they regulate the relationships between the State and individuals under their jurisdiction, rather than simply relationships between States. In order to present this logic, this chapter provides an overview of how human rights came to emerge in international law; it discusses the sources of international human rights law; and it locates human rights within general international law. Sections 1 and 2 offer a general overview of the main developments that have occurred at universal and regional levels, leading to the contemporary regime of international human rights. The description remains superficial at this stage, but forms an indispensable background to the following chapters. The most controversial questions arising about the sources of international human rights – such as the role of the emergence of a jus commune in human rights law, the status of human rights in customary international law, or the position of human rights in general international law – are explored in further depth in sections 3 and 4 of this chapter. The reader already familiar with the basic instruments of international human rights should move directly to those sections.

This chapter examines the relevance of the notions of ‘national territory’ and of ‘jurisdiction’ to the determination of situations in which the international responsibility of States may be engaged. This has become one of the most debated issues in international human rights doctrine (see, among many others, F. Coomans and M. Kamminga (eds.), Extraterritorial Application of Human Rights Treaties (Antwerp and Oxford: Intersentia–Hart, 2004); M. J. Dennis, ‘Application of Human Rights Treaties Extraterritorially in Times of Armed Conflict and Military Occupation’, American Journal of International Law, 99 (2005), 119; O. De Schutter, ‘Globalization and Jurisdiction: Lessons from the European Convention on Human Rights’, Baltic Yearbook of International Law, 6 (2006), pp. 183–245; M. Gondek, The Reach of Human Rights in a Globalising World: Extraterritorial Application of Human Rights Treaties (Antwerp: Intersentia, 2009); F. Hampson, ‘The Scope of the Extra-territorial Applicability of Human Rights Law’, in G. Gilbert, F. Hampson, and C. Sandoval (eds.), The Delivery of Human Rights: Essays in Honour of Professor Sir Nigel Rodley (London: Routledge, 2010), pp. 156–82); M. Milanovic, Extraterritorial Application of Human Rights Treaties (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). The main question addressed in much of the literature is whether the notion of ‘jurisdiction’ (taken separately or in combination with that of ‘territory’) designates a condition for a finding of State responsibility which is distinct from that of attribution, or whether instead the two notions – ‘jurisdiction’ and ‘attribution’ – are in fact synonymous and thus interchangeable. And this is indeed the question this chapter focuses upon, although breaking it down into a set of sub-questions corresponding to the different situations in which the question of State responsibility can be raised.

Part II seeks to introduce the substantive content of international human rights. It includes five chapters. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 discuss the three levels of obligations imposed on States: to respect, to protect, and to fulfil human rights. Chapter 6 describes under which conditions rights may be derogated from in times of emergency. Chapter 7 examines the non-discrimination requirement, which cuts across the different obligations imposed on States, and is a core principle of human rights law, with a number of different ramifications.

The obligation to fulfil requires the State to adopt appropriate legislative, administrative, and other measures towards the full realization of human rights. The implication is that the realization of human rights must become the object of a policy aimed at improving them. Not only must policies in place not violate human rights, and take them into account as a transversal concern (a requirement referred to as ‘mainstreaming’); in addition, policies must be put in place explicitly in order to make progress towards fulfilling them. Human rights require, in that sense, appropriate policy-making.