U.N. Human Rights Treaty System Under Review: Ford Foundation Awards $1.4 Million To York University Director Of Centre For Refugee Studies

TORONTO, December 9, 1998 -- The Ford Foundation has awarded $1.4 million to York University Professor Anne Bayefsky to conduct a review of the United Nations Human Rights Treaty System. The study is to be conducted directly in collaboration with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. During High Commissioner Mary Robinson's address at York University Nov. 24 -- part of her first official visit to Canada -- she highlighted the importance of the study to her reform endeavours.

The study, to be conducted with Professor Christof Heyns from the University of Pretoria in South Africa, will take place over the next 18 months and will produce a report to the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights containing detailed recommendations for reform. The study has been launched in conjunction with the 50th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

"While the legacy of the Declaration was a commitment to the rule of law and the link between legal right and remedy, the international human rights system often provides little or no redress to real human rights victims," said Bayefsky, who is also Director of the Centre for Refugee Studies at York University.

Canada is a major participant of the U.N. human rights treaty system, which includes six different treaties: civil and political rights; economic, social and cultural rights; racial discrimination; discrimination against women; children; and torture. Canada has accepted all six treaties, and Canadians actively participate in the regular U.N. reviews of Canada's human rights record. Last week, one of the treaty monitoring bodies, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, criticized Canada after Canadian Non-Governmental Organizations made forceful presentations to the Committee in Geneva.

Canada also has the dubious distinction of being subject to more individual complaints to the monitoring body on civil and political rights - the Human Rights Committee - than any other state party to the complaints procedure. At its next session, in March 1999 in New York, the Committee will take up the case of Arieh Waldman, who claims that Ontario's public funding of only Catholic denominational schools is a violation of non-discrimination rights in the U.N. civil and political rights treaty.

The study comes at a time when the U.N. human rights treaty system is under mounting pressure to reform -- from non-governmental organizations and governments alike. The treaty monitoring bodies are faced with more than 1,000 overdue reports from states on compliance with the treaties obligations. The backlog for the consideration of reports by the independent bodies stretches into years. The individual complaint processes are subject to serious difficulties, including the fact that despite widespread state acceptance of a right to complain, fewer than 100 cases a year are received from a potential complainant population of more than one billion people. Countries like Algeria or Chad have never been the subject of a single complaint.

Professor Bayefsky is the recipient of Canada's highest human rights research award, the Bora Laskin National Fellowship in Human Rights Research, and a MacArthur Foundation research and writing award for her work on the U.N. human rights treaties. She has participated in many Canadian delegations to the U.N. Human Rights Commission and General Assembly, and in Human Rights World Conferences in Vienna and Beijing. She teaches international human rights at York University, where she is currently the Director of the Centre for Refugee Studies.

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For more information, please contact:

Prof. Anne Bayefsky
Director, Centre for Refugee Studies
York University
(416) 736-2100, ext. 66662 or 736-5663
email: bayefsky@yorku.ca

Sine MacKinnon
Senior Advisor for Media Relations
York University
(416) 736-2100, ext. 22807
YU/091/98