The Procedures Before the UN Human Rights Treaty Bodies Divergence or Convergence?

The seven core UN human rights treaties are each supervised by an expert committee. This book is the first to explore whether and to what extent the Committees supervisory procedures display similarities and tend to converge. In four parts, the reporting procedure, procedures related to the reporting procedure, the individual complaints procedure and the inquiry procedure are studied. This study thus makes an important contribution to the on-going effort within the UN to harmonize and streamline the reporting procedures, and will be equally useful for devising and operationalizing new complaints and inquiry procedures. This book will prove its relevance to beginners and experts in the field alike. For the former it offers a comprehensive and accessible overview of the current functioning of each of the treaty bodies. For the latter it provides a systematic comparison of similarities and differences, both from a static and dynamic perspective. Wouter Vandenhole holds an LL.M. in law in development from the University of Warwick (UK) and a PhD. from the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium). He is now a research fellow at the Institute for Human Rights of the Catholic University of Leuven. In 2002-2003, he was a senior teaching assistant of the European Masters Degree in Human Rights.

Wouter Vandenhole is an internationally recognized expert in transnational human rights obligations and in human rights and development. He has been invited as guest lecturer to universities all over the world. He serves on the editorial board of several international journals, among which the Journal of Human Rights Practice and Human Rights and International Legal Discourse. He has taken up management functions in European research and teaching networks: he was the chair of the Research Networking Programme, Beyond Territoriality: Globalization and Transnational Human Rights Obligations (GLOTHRO), funded by the European Science Foundation (2010-2014); he was the vice-chair of the COST Action The Role of the EU in UN Human Rights Reform (2009-2013); and is a member of the executive committee of the Children’s Rights Education Academic Network, funded by the Life Long Learning Programme of the European Commission (2012-2015). He is the lead convenor of an international summer course on Human Rights for Development (hr4dev.be). Wouter Vandenhole holds the chair in human rights and the UNICEF chair in children’s rights at the faculty of law of the University of Antwerp since 2007. He was a postdoctoral researcher at Tilburg University (Veni Grant) from 2005 to 2007, and a senior teaching assistant at the European Master’s Degree in Human Rights and Democratisation in 2002-2003. From 1995 to 2005, he was a researcher at the University of Leuven. BA in Philosophy, University of Leuven (Belgium), LL.B., LL.M. University of Leuven (Belgium), LL.M. in Law in Development, University of Warwick (UK); Ph.D. University of Leuven (Belgium).

1 Legal and economic background to the Bermuda form 2 New York law applied in a London arbitration: the legal consequence 3 The Bermuda Form: its basic structure 4 The coverage clause (Clause 1) 5 The occurrence definition 6 Fortuities, expected and intended and the maintenance deductible 7 Notice of Occurrence 8 The Limits of Liability Clause (Clause 2) 9 The Exclusions (Clause 4). 10 The Conditions (Clause 5/ 6) 11 Misrepresentation and Non-Disclosure 12 Waiver, estoppel and reservation of rights 13 The course and conduct of a London arbitration: English and American cultural differences 14 Discovery, privilege and waiver of privilege Appendix 1 Pro-forma documents: notice of occurrence, and notice of commencement of arbitration Appendix 2 Copies of the policy forms used over the years by Bermuda insurers, ACE and XL