Can international law hold states to account?

The UN  has 10 human rights treaty bodies and this year Australia will face scrutiny before three of them:

• In May/June, Australia appears before the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; 
• In October, Australia appears before the Human Rights Committee; and 
• In November/December, before the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

Kaldor Centre Senior Research Associate Madeline Gleeson explains how the reviews work, and what they add to States accountability under international human rights law, in a speech to the Law Council of Australia’s Immigration Law Conference.

Gleeson’s speech steps through the ways – imperfect but important – that governments can be held to account to human rights standards. You can read it in full here.