2004, the German Institute for Human Rights undertook a series of expert meetings on the concluding observations of treaty bodies of core human rights treaties of the United Nations. By holding meetings on the concerns and recommendations of the four committees, the institute wished to offer a platform to the ministries concerned, the NGO community, members of parliament, and representatives of academia for discussing some of the observations in depth and for developing recommendations for their implementation in Germany.
With this paper, the institute wants to present this tool of treaty implementation to a international human rights community. A short overview of the functioning of the reporting system and the purpose of concluding observations is followed by deliberations on the role that a national human rights institution has, or could potentially develop, in relation to treaty bodies. In the second part of the paper, the follow-up meetings of the institute are described. The third part of the paper shows how the institute continued its activities after the meetings by addressing members of parliament, several federal ministries and the treaty bodies themselves. The paper ends with a set of recommendations to other national human rights institutions, concerned NGOs, governments and the larger human rights community on the follow-up to concluding observations at the national level.
