Limiting power of governments over people.

• Author: Rajadhyaksha, Joya
• Position: The Human Rights Committee - Civil and Political Rights Covenant ratification - Interview

March 23 marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the entry into force of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The event prompted a number of questions, not the least of which is how effective and pervasive the Covenant and other treaties like it really are. Justice Praffullachandra Natwarlal Bhagwati of India, Chairman of the Human Rights Committee that monitors the implementation of the Covenant, said that treaties like this one embody moral and political values, and give them a legal shape: "Human rights are legal, by all means, because they involve the implementation of rights and obligations. They are moral, because they are a value-based system that preserves human dignity. And they are political in the larger sense of the word. Human rights govern the structuring of Governments. The also operate to limit the power of Governments over individuals."

This Covenant, along with the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, expands and elaborates on the provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It explicitly sanctions rights such as the one to self. determination, that are only mentioned in passing in the Declaration. It also has two Optional Protocols--one which advocates abolishing the death penalty, and the other that provides for individual complaints. Both Covenants, along with the protocols and the Declaration, make up the International Bill of Human Rights.

The Civil and Political Rights Covenant was opened for signature in the General Assembly on 16 December 1966. Unlike its parent body--the Universal Declaration, which was adopted with eight abstentions in 1948--the Covenant took almost ten years to meet the minimum number of signatures required for its ratification. Even today, only 148 of the 189 United Nations Member States are party to the Covenant.

Justice Bhagwati attributed these lags to the fact that the Covenant, unlike the Declaration, is legally binding. "Once States ratify the Covenant, they are bound by it. Some countries, though they are willing, even anxious, to sign, feel that they won't be able to meet its their legal systems are not geared to comply with it." He adds that the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights is making efforts to persuade all Governments to ratify not just this Covenant but also the five related human rights instruments, i.e. the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment; the...