Thomas Kleinlein

This introduction presents a special issue of the Journal of Human Rights Practice on the state of the international human rights system. It places the challenges and shortcomings of the 2020 Human Rights Treaty Body Review in the context of the broader discussion on human rights normativity and compliance. The unwillingness of member states to fulfil their budgetary commitments, as well as the ignorance with which some reform proposals were met, reflect a lack of understanding of the significance of legal procedures in the human rights treaty bodies. The main focus of reform efforts is to facilitate reporting obligations for states parties by simplifying procedures to make them more manageable for both states parties and treaty bodies. However, lack of compliance with human rights constitutes the severest shortcoming of international human rights protection today. Therefore, current reform ambitions risk losing sight of the rights holders and of actual human rights implementation on the ground. This fear explains the focus of this special issue on the normativity of human rights and compliance: treaty bodies play a continuous and crucial role for the normative force of human rights as well as their continuous development. They should be perceived as agents of social change and tools to turn rhetoric to action. At the same time, the normative meaning of human rights commitments and its (re-)construction depend on social practices in the states parties. After explaining the dialogical approach and framework of the special issue, the introduction provides an overview of individual contributions (articles and comments) and highlights the key messages of the human rights practitioners involved in the special issue against the background of the ongoing treaty body review.