Inter-State Communication under ICERD: From ad hoc Conciliation to Collective Enforcement?

Abstract

The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) contains the inter-State communication procedure within which the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) received the following three communications in 2018: Qatar v Saudi Arabia, Qatar v the United Arab Emirates, and Palestine v Israel. In these cases, CERD characterized this procedure as relating to collective enforcement, analogous to the inter-State application procedure within the order/regime of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). However, unlike the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), ICERD does not refer to ‘collective enforcement’, but merely contains ad hoc conciliation, that is a bilateral means for reaching a mutually agreed solution to a dispute. This article aims, rather critically, to assess whether, and to which extent, it is justified to view the CERD ad hoc conciliation procedure as a means of collective enforcement.