Geneva Academy
The Academic Platform on Treaty Body Review 2020 has an entirely new portal on our website, allowing visitors to easily access key information about this project, its documents, timeframe, regional consultations, annual conferences and the team.
This forms part of a new section where we will be highlighting our various platforms, which address topical issues and challenges in the human rights and international humanitarian law fields. These platforms are informed by our research and advance understanding and stimulate debate in the academic community, in policy-making institutions and in government.
The United Nations (UN) human rights (HR) treaty bodies are a central pillar of the international HR protection system. They prevent HR violations by warning states about areas of concern, by advising them on durable solutions that address root causes and by adjudicating individual complaints.
Since the establishment of the first UN treaty body in 1970, both treaty ratifications and the treaty body system have expanded significantly. While this has enhanced HR protection worldwide, it has also created complex challenges that affect the system and those who interact with it: states, national HR institutions, UN entities, civil society organizations, individual complainants and rights-holders at large.
On 9 April 2014, the UN General Assembly (GA) adopted a landmark resolution (A/RES/68/268) on strenghtening the treaty body system, which envisages a review of the measures taken at GA level in 2020. This review represents an opportunity to further reflect on the treaty body system’s future and develop innovative proposals and solutions without weakening the HR protection that the system currently affords.
The Geneva Academy is coordinating the academic input to this 2020 review via the creation of an academic network of independent researchers, a call for papers, a series of regional consultations, annual conferences in Geneva, as well as ongoing interactions with key stakeholders (i.e. states, UN treaty bodies, national HR institutions, civil society, UN entities and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights).
News
Geneva Academy
In the context of our Academic Platform on Treaty Body Review 2020, an academic process contributing to the 2020 review of UN treaty bodies by the General Assembly, we held two regional consultations, for Eastern Europe and Latin America.
News
Garry Knight
The deadline to submit papers in the context of the Academic Platform on Treaty Body Review 2020 has been extended until the end of September 2017.
Training
Nicolas Axelrod / Ruom
Cette formation en ligne permet d’acquérir une connaissance approfondie des droits économiques, sociaux et culturels (DESC), des obligations des états et des mécanismes chargés de les protéger et de surveiller leur mise en œuvre.
Short Course
UN Photo / Jean-Marc Ferré
This course, ahead of the main UN Human Rights Council session, allows participants to develop their network and acquire the necessary skills to lead and perform effectively in this major forum for human rights diplomacy.
Project
UN Photo / Pierre Albouy
This project, launched in 2016, examines different concepts of universality, maps contemporary challenges to the principle of HR universality in the context of specific themes covered by the HRC and discusses the role of the HRC in the promotion and protection of universally guaranteed HR.
Project
Columbia University
The Geneva Academy is coordinating the academic input to the 2020 review of UN treaty bodies by the UN General Assembly via the creation of an academic network of independent researchers, a call for papers, a series of regional consultations, annual conferences in Geneva, as well as ongoing interactions with key stakeholders.
