IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/joupea/v36y1999i1p95-118.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: Does It Make a Difference in Human Rights Behavior?

Author

Listed:
  • Linda Camp Keith

    (Department of Political Science, University of North Texas)

Abstract

Formal acceptance of international agreements on human rights has progressed to the point where currently over three-quarters of the UN member states are parties to the International Covenant on Political and Civil Rights. In fact, becoming a party to this covenant seems to be concomitant with joining the UN. Of the newly independent states in Eastern Europe and in the region of the former Soviet Union, only Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Moldova, and Macedonia have not joined the treaty. This article tests empirically whether becoming a party to this international treaty (and its optional protocol) has an observable impact on the state party's actual behavior. The hypothesis is tested across 178 countries over an eighteen-year period (1976-93) and across four different measures of state human rights behavior. Initial bivariate analyses demonstrate some statistically significant differences between the behavior of states parties and the behavior of non-party states. However, this difference does not appear in the bivariate analysis that compares the states parties' behavior before becoming a party to the treaty with their behavior after becoming a party state. When the analysis progresses to more sophisticated multivariate analysis, in which factors known to affect human rights are controlled, the impact of the covenant and its optional protocol disappears altogether. Overall, this study suggests that it may be overly optimistic to expect that being a party to this international covenant will produce an observable direct impact.

Suggested Citation

  • Linda Camp Keith, 1999. "The United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: Does It Make a Difference in Human Rights Behavior?," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 36(1), pages 95-118, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:joupea:v:36:y:1999:i:1:p:95-118
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://jpr.sagepub.com/content/36/1/95.abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Eric Neumayer, 2013. "Do governments mean business when they derogate? Human rights violations during notified states of emergency," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 8(1), pages 1-31, March.
    2. Emily Hencken Ritter & Courtenay R. Conrad, 2016. "Human rights treaties and mobilized dissent against the state," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 11(4), pages 449-475, December.
    3. Spilker, Gabriele, 2013. "The Impact of Preferencial Trade Agreements on Governmental Repression Revisited," Papers 553, World Trade Institute.
    4. Susan Ariel Aaronson & M. Rodwan Abouharb, 2010. "Unexpected Bedfellows: The GATT, the WTO, and Some Democratic Rights," Working Papers 2010-12, The George Washington University, Institute for International Economic Policy.
    5. Seo-Young Cho, 2014. "International Women's Convention, Democracy, and Gender Equality," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 95(3), pages 719-739, September.
    6. Lorenz Blume & Stefan Voigt, 2007. "The Economic Effects of Human Rights," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(4), pages 509-538, November.
    7. TCHAMANBÉ DJINÉ Louise, TDL & MIAMO WENDJI Clovis, MWC, 2012. "Transferts Financiers des Migrants et développement en Afrique subsaharienne," MPRA Paper 38139, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:joupea:v:36:y:1999:i:1:p:95-118. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.prio.no/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.