Challenges and Pitfalls in Research on Compliance with the ‘Views’ of UN Human Rights Treaty Bodies: A Reply to Vera Shikhelman

• Published in: European journal of international law Vol. 31; no. 2; pp. 693 - 708
• Main Authors: Ullmann, Andreas J, von Staden, Andreas
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: UK Oxford University Press 01.09.2020; Oxford Publishing Limited (England)
• Subjects: Appeals; Compliance; HUMAN RIGHTS; Influence; INTERNATIONAL LAW; International law and human rights; Methodological approaches; Politics and government; Reliability; Statistical methods; STATISTICS; Survival analysis; Treaties; UNITED NATIONS; United Nations. Human Rights Committee
• ISSN: 0938-5428; 1464-3596
• DOI: 10.1093/ejil/chaa041

Abstract Vera Shikhelman’s recent article on the implementation of the views of the United Nations Human Rights Committee (HRC) took a valuable first step towards addressing the question why states do, or do not, comply with adverse treaty body views. In this contribution, we contend that parts of the chosen theoretical and methodological approach are somewhat problematic, however, and ultimately weaken the overall strength and reliability of Shikhelman’s findings. Theoretically, we question whether hypotheses developed in the context of studying compliance with international law and legally binding court judgments can be transferred to legally non-binding views without adjusting for potentially consequential differences in their legal status. Methodologically, we note certain issues concerning the data generated by the HRC’s follow-up procedure and its use in Shikhelman’s analysis, and suggest that statistical methods that take into consideration the time dimension of implementation processes, notably survival analysis, yield analytically more convincing causal inferences. We provide illustrative results of such a methodologically revised approach to examining compliance with adverse HRC views that reveal more fine-grained insights into the temporally unfolding processes of implementing such decisions.