| Chapter 2: | Investigative Detention and International Human Rights Law |
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is not fulfilling its obligations under the Covenant.”50 The United States, thus, is subject to the interstate complaint mechanism, which allows the committee to receive and consider communications from one state party claiming that another state party is not fulfilling its obligations under the ICCPR. It should be noted, however, that no state party has ever filed an interstate complaint against another state. Should a state party ever file such a complaint against the United States, the committee would have a role in evaluating the alleged violation.51
The European Convention on Human Rights
A separate instrument that pertains exclusively to European states is the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“ECHR”), which was signed in 1950 and entered into force in 1953.52 This convention was, in part, a response to the human rights atrocities committed during the Second World War and represented an attempt to integrate European powers in a way that would prevent the repetition of such large-scale violence and global conflict.
Both France and the United Kingdom are parties to the ECHR, though the United States―being located in North America―is not.
There is no hierarchy of rights under the ECHR, though commentators distinguish between those rights in the convention that are “unqualified” and “qualified.”54 Those which are unqualified are the right to life; the prohibition on torture, inhuman, or degrading treatment; the prohibition on slavery and forced labor; the right to liberty and security; the