CGPL is happy to announce that its blog now also includes blog posts that cover the recent jurisprudential trends in UN Treaty Body Views. With the unique expertise acquired by our group of reporters, who have reported nearly one hundred headnotes since 2015 to-date, we hope to contribute to the accessibility of UNHRL case law, highlighting specific cases and jurisprudential trends.

CGPL has been contributing to the prestigious Oxford Reports of International Law database (ORIL)’s Oxford Reports on International Human Rights Law series since 2015. The CGPL has supplied ORIL with comprehensive coverage of all Views issued by the United Nations Human Rights Treaty Bodies since 2014, as well as some decisions from 2013.  Each headnote both summarises the main facts and holdings, and provides analyses of the Views with a focus on how the UN treaty bodies develop their jurisprudence and compare to developments in other treaty bodies and regional human rights courts .

As of January 2017, the CGPL team supplies the ORIL with headnotes covering Views rendered by eight UN Committees:

• Human Rights Committee (HRC)
• Committee Against Torture (CAT)
• Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)
• Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD)
• Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD)
• Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC)
• Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR)
• Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED)

In these blog posts, published on CGPL’s blog, OxHRLR, cover novel trends in the jurisprudence of the UN Human Rights Treaty Bodies. We hope that these contributions will also help deciphering the crux of selected Views, their impact on the Committee’s future case-law as well as on international human rights law in general.

The following blog posts are available online:

• Seçil Bilgiç, A Scrutiny of Algeria’s Responses to Individual Petitions before the United Nations Human Rights Committee,  21 September 2016
• Mine Orer, The Swiss cases before the 53rd Session of the UN Committee against Torture and their Contributions to the Interpretation of the Principle of Non-Refoulement, 7 October 2016
• Seçil Bilgiç,  A Case to Remember: Abdelmalek v. Algeria before the Committee against Torture, 1 February 2017

Watch this space for upcoming posts on issues such as fair trial rights; continuous violations; victim status; stereotyping of women; enforced disappearances; and the states’ obligation to cooperate with UN treaty bodies. You can also follow how this collection develops by clicking here.

The OxHRLR Work-study programme at KU Law School works closely with Oxford University Press. Headnotes submitted by the CGPL-based OxHRL Reporters team are published under the Oxford Reports on International Human Rights Law section of the Oxford Reports on International Law online database. The work-study programme offers KU students an unrivalled opportunity to hone in their analytical and academic writing skills, engage in early-career publishing as well as a unique opportunity to contribute to a fast-growing a prestigious online database.

Since 2016, CGPL is also providing a collection of selected Turkish translations and analyses of the United Nations Treaty Bodies’ jurisprudence.  By the end of this academic year, we aim to have translated ten views from the United Nations Treaty Bodies to be accompanied by a brief analysis of each View’s significance. Since Türkiye is a State party of nine out of ten United Nations Human Rights Conventions, our hope with these translations is to bring the United Nations human rights system closer to home.

To date, the following UN human rights case law and accompanying analyses are available in Turkish:

1. R. P. B v. Filipinler – Değerlendirme

2. X v. Arjantin – Değerlendirme

3. TBB-Berlin Brandenburg Türkiye Toplumu – Değerlendirme