REPORTING TO THE UNITED NATIONS HUMAN RIGHTS TREATY BODIES TRAINING GUIDE: Part I — Manual Treaty Bodies’ mandates include the competence to assess the compatibility of reservations with the object and purpose of the treaty they monitor. As the International Law Commission4 concluded in its Guide to Practice on Reservations on Treaties, Treaty Bodies are competent to assess the permissibility of a reservation when the issue comes before them in the exercise of their functions.5 Treaty Bodies do not have the power to overturn a reservation but they request, more or less systematically within the review of State party reports, that State parties withdraw their impermissible reservations. For example CEDAW regularly advises State parties which made reservations to central provisions of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, such as articles 2 and 16, to withdraw them as they are incompatible with the object and purpose of the Convention and hence impermissible under article 28, paragraph 2 of the Convention.6 The Committee is of the view that these types of reservation limit the applicability of the Convention, thus weakening the protection of women’s human rights at national level.7 According to the Human Rights Committee, reservations must be specific and transparent, that is they must refer to a particular provision of the treaty and indicate in precise terms its scope in its relationship thereto; and moreover they should be also limited in number so that they do not lead to substantial limitations on the applicability of human rights treaty provisions.8 The Committee has indicated that States should institute procedures to ensure that each and every proposed reservation is compatible with the object and purpose of the Covenant. States should also ensure that the necessity for maintaining reservations is periodically reviewed, taking account of any observations and recommendations made by the Committee during examination of their reports. Reservations should be withdrawn at the earliest possible moment.9 1.3. The human rights Treaty Bodies As mentioned above, when a State becomes a party to a treaty, it assumes a legal obligation to implement the rights set out therein. In order to consider the progress that State parties make in meeting their human rights obligations, each of the nine core international human rights treaties establishes a human rights Treaty Body – an international committee of independent experts. In addition, the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture establishes the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture, with a specific mandate on torture prevention. Thus the United Nations human rights Treaty Body System consists of ten Treaty Bodies, often referred to as Committees, as follows: 4 The International Law Commission was established by the General Assembly, in 1947, to undertake the mandate of the Assembly, under article 13 (1) (a) of the Charter of the United Nations to “initiate studies and make recommendations for the purpose of ... encouraging the progressive development of international law and its codification”. More information is available at http://legal. un.org/ilc/. 5 GAOR, 64th session, Supp. No. 10 (A/64/10), report of the International Law Commission 61st session (4 May-5 June and 6 July – 7 August 2009); see also Human Rights Committee, General Comment no. 24 (1994), CCPR/C/21/rev.1/Add.6 , paras. 16-18. 6 See for example, CEDAW/C/DZA/CO/3-4, paras. 13-14, CEDAW/C/SGP/CO/4, paras. 13-14 and CEDAW/C/ARE/CO/23, paras. 9-10. The Committee also urges States parties to establish clear time-frames for withdrawing reservations to articles 2 and 16, whenever States parties have reported an ongoing internal process. See for example, CEDAW/C/KOR/CO/7, para. 10, CEDAW/C/LSO/CO/1-4, para. 14 and CEDAW/C/CHE/CO/4-5, para. 8. 7 Report of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, 18th and 19th Sessions, A/53/38/Rev.1 (1998), paras. 6, 14-17, (Statement on reservations to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women) 8 8 Human Rights Committee, General Comment no. 24 (1994), CCPR/C/21/rev.1/Add.6 , paras. 17-18.  See, for example: CCPR/C/ FRA/CO/5, para. 5 and CCPR/C/MDV/CO/1, para. 5. 9 Ibid, para. 20. See for example, CCPR/C/MCO/CO/2, para. 6.