Reporting-based human rights conventions are among the most widely ratified international law instruments. They aim to create a normative framework to allow states to develop their own practices and laws to respect the rights that they seek to protect. United Nations committees assess reports from states parties and this feedback is intended to support national efforts at implementation. The lack of reciprocity between parties to these conventions means that they are quite dissimilar from most other legal instruments. Furthermore, from a practical perspective, the compromises made in trying to achieve widespread ratification, the credibility lost by poor implementation and empirical evidence showing weak effects on state practice all raise serious doubts as to whether these instruments should be referred to as “binding law”.

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