| What international instruments?
Covenants and Conventions are legally binding treaties for the countries that have signed and ratified them. Ratification means that after representatives of a country have signed a treaty, the head of state or government of that country has approved this signature. In a treaty it will be stated if ratification is necessary or not.
Covenants and Conventions can be bilateral (between two countries) or multilateral (between more than two countries). If done under the auspices of the United Nations, covenants and conventions are first adopted (by resolution) by the General Assembly and then opened for both signature and ratification. All treaties entered into by member states to the UN are registered with the UN secretariat. States that did not sign and ratify a covenant, convention or treaty, can still accede to it at a later stage.
A covenant, convention or treaty enters into force when a pre-determined number of states have ratified or acceded to the treaty. When a state ratifies or accedes to a treaty, that state may make reservations to one or more articles of the treaty, unless the treaty prohibits reservations. Reservations may normally be withdrawn at any time. A list of the ratification and reservations of major international human rights covenants/conventions can be found on: http://www.unhchr.ch/pdf/report.pdf (please create link to this web site). Another way of checking whether a particular country is party to a specific covenant, is by going to the text of the covenant itself (which you can do under Section 3), where you will also see “Status of Ratification” and “Declarations and Reservations” that you can click on.
In some countries, international treaties take precedence over national law; in others, a specific law may be required to give an international treaty, although ratified or acceded to, the force of a national law. Practically all states that have ratified or acceded to an international treaty must adopt new or amend existing laws in order for the treaty to be fully effective on the national territory.
Under some well-known Conventions and Covenants, Committees have been established that oversee how states who are party to such a Convention implement the rights and obligations in it at their national level. Furthermore, these Committees provide explanations and interpretations of the human rights mentioned in such a Convention. These explanations or interpretations are called “General Comments” or “General Recommendations”. The most important General Comments are also listed in Section 3.
Declarations and Recommendations are generally documents of intent. In most cases they do not create legally binding obligations on the countries, which sign them. Declarations and recommendations cannot be ratified. In some instances, a declaration and/or recommendation may gain the force of binding law if its contents are widely accepted by the international community. It then achieves the status of customary international law. The Universal Declaration on Human Rights is an example of a Declaration that has gained the force of binding law.
Agendas and Platforms/Programmes for Action are often attached to a Declaration. Their status is similar to that of Declarations, generally laying down commitments and intentions that have a political rather than legally binding status.
Resolutions are documents without legally binding force (except for the resolutions of the UN Security Council). As they are usually issued by UN bodies (for example: the UN Commission on Human Rights or the UN Commission on the Status of Women), they can however carry considerable weight and often are much more detailed about one particular subject than other international instruments.
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