Contours of a conclusion, into the sixth UN treaty system decade

Abstract

This conclusion cannot possibly do justice to the rich and nuanced material contained in the comprehensive chapters covering the ‘impact’ of nine core United Nations (UN) human rights treaties, ten UN treaty bodies (untb s), and three substantive protocols in divergent contexts over a period of 20 years. We therefore are deliberately modest in our ambitions for this chapter. While we aim to highlight some illustrative examples, and suggest some trends, we take caution not to arrive at expansive overarching and cross- cutting conclusions. Our thoughts and tentative insights are aimed at opening the door to others, to encourage future researchers to delve deeper into and more closely analyse the rich body of evidence contained in the pages of the 20 country study chapters. We draw some comparison between this study’s conclusions and those of the first (1999) study (and the 2002 book).1 Having covered the three decades between the entry into force of the first treaty body in 1969 and 1999 in the first study, this book contains further reflection on the fourth and fifth UNTB decades (2000 to 2019). What is incontrovertible, though, is that the country reports amplify the finding in the previous study that the treaties have had ‘an enormous influence’.