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The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) is a multilateral human rights document that reflects a broad consensus: Nearly all the world’s countries have ratified the 1976 treaty and pledged to uphold the many rights and freedoms it protects. But when governments fail to live up to these pledges, who holds them accountable?

“Promising to comply with a human rights treaty is one thing, but assessing actual practice requires external scrutiny and oversight,” said Laurence R. Helfer, a professor specializing in international law and human rights at Duke University School of Law.

For the ICCPR, compliance is monitored by the United Nations Human Rights Committee, an 18-member body of independent experts that includes Helfer, who was elected in 2022 to a four-year term after being nominated by the United States.

Through his Committee service over the past three years, Helfer has helped shine a spotlight on the human rights records of governments and contributed to the development of international law through the Committee’s decisions and scholarship that is informed by his experiences as a member of the expert body.

Compliance through collaboration

The Human Rights Committee has three main monitoring functions. It reviews reports from the treaty’s 174 states parties and engages in a constructive dialogue with governments; it issues quasi-judicial decisions assessing violations in response to complaints by individuals; and it publishes general guidance interpreting the rights in the ICCPR.

The state reporting process typically spans several years. For each country that is due to report, Committee members, assisted by lawyers from the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, research the most salient civil and political rights challenges in that state. These concerns are organized into a public document that lists issues and questions about potential violations. The country then has one or two years to submit a report. The Committee also welcomes input from civil society groups—which provide information and perspectives that are often more critical of a government’s human rights record than its official report.

The human rights concerns that the Committee addresses are not static. “One year the focus may be on arbitrary detentions or due process; the next year public protests and elections are the most high-profile issues,” Helfer noted. The Committee must decide how to address these concerns in a concise and impactful way—a task that becomes more complicated when a state’s government changes over time. 

After the state submits its report, the Committee holds a two-day public dialogue in Geneva, Switzerland with a delegation from the government being reviewed, which often includes officials from the foreign and justice ministries, the national police, and the department of health or women’s affairs. The dialogues are livestreamed, recorded and available to the public.

UN human rights lawyers then assist the experts to prepare a document detailing the Committee’s concerns and recommendations to the state. These “concluding observations,” which are published and reported in the press and social media, often serve as a touchstone for domestic civil society groups to pressure governments, providing an additional pathway for compliance and accountability. 

Interpreting the treaty as “a living instrument”

About two-thirds of states parties have ratified the ICCPR’s First Optional Protocol, which authorizes the Committee to review complaints from individuals who have exhausted domestic remedies. This makes the Committee “the last resort determiner of whether an individual’s civil and political rights have been violated, and if so, what remedies are appropriate,” Helfer explained. The Committee’s published decisions not only offer relief to the person who brought the case, but also provide interpretive guidance that can shape the conduct of governments in all countries, Helfer said.

Last, the Committee interprets ICCPR rights in “General Comments” — documents that “flesh out what a particular right or freedom means in practice,” Helfer said. Both the individual petition process and these guidance documents help the Committee to develop international law by interpreting the treaty “as a living instrument that responds to contemporary challenges and evolving human rights concerns,” he noted.

For example, the Committee broke new ground in a 2025 decision, Maya Indigenous Peoples v. Guatemala, which considered not only the rights of Maya communities forcibly displaced during an armed conflict in the 1980s, but also the rights of their descendants, who were born in displacement and raised without access to their traditional lands and culture. Among other remedies, the Committee recommended that the state provide medical and mental health treatment to the original victims, their children and grandchildren, and publicly acknowledge and apologize for the violations. Helfer coauthored a separate opinion offering additional guidance on intergenerational rights.

In a 2024 case, Juan Gasparini v. Argentina, the Committee found in favor of a journalist whose reporting on the crimes of Argentina’s military dictatorship made him the target of a libel suit. The judges who ruled against Gasparini were later sentenced to life imprisonment for obstructing investigations of dictatorship-era human rights abuses. The Committee found that the chilling effect of this lawsuit violated Gasparini’s right to freedom of expression, which is especially important in transitional justice contexts where investigations of human rights violations are ongoing and truth-seeking can help to rebuild democracy.

Argentina explicitly acknowledged its responsibility before the Committee, in what the Centre for Civil and Political Rights called “a rare gesture that underscores the role of the Committee in supporting accountability and reparations in post-authoritarian societies.” Helfer was inspired by the Gasparini case to pursue research on other instances in which international courts and review bodies order states to apologize or acknowledge responsibility for prior human rights violations.

Work continues despite funding challenges

Many human rights bodies have been affected by the UN’s severe financial crisis. But Helfer and his colleagues are continuing their work. Among other tasks, the Committee issues “interim measures”—urgent requests that a state party preserve the status quo until the experts can review the merits of a complaint. The process, which is somewhat analogous to the U.S. Supreme Court’s emergency docket, requires a decision within a few days. Interim measures are often issued in asylum cases in which a person faces imminent deportation to a country where their human rights are in jeopardy.

The Committee’s decisions are not legally binding, Helfer explained. But, he said, “If we say, ‘This person is at risk of torture if you return them to the country where they’re from,’ governments will often listen. And even before the Committee reviews the case, officials sometimes take a second look and grant asylum or issue a residency permit.”

All aspects of the UN Human Rights Committee’s mandate — providing justice to individuals, developing international law, and bolstering the advocacy tools of civil society groups — demonstrates the value of treaty monitoring bodies, Helfer said.

“The Human Rights Committee has been a focus of my academic research and legal advocacy for many years,” Helfer concluded. “Serving as a member of this body and contributing to its work has been one of the highlights of my professional career.”