Awakening of Inter-State Communications Mechanism Before the CERD & Its Potential to Enhance the Justiciability of Racial Discrimination

ABSTRACT: A significant milestone was reached with the first three inter-State communications ever submitted to a UN human rights treaty body, namely the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (‘CERD’). These landmark cases involved Qatar’s submissions against the United Arab Emirates and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, as well as Palestine’s communication against Israel, each claiming racial discrimination. This article analyzes the CERD’s recent jurisprudence regarding precedents on procedural conditions. It arrives at four distinctive characteristics of the inter-State communications mechanism before the CERD, collectively resulting in an unprecedented low procedural threshold for its activation. From here it explores the mechanism’s potential to enhance the justiciability of human rights abuses amounting to racial discrimination on the universal level. Ultimately, the article calls for greater recognition and utilization of the inter-State communications mechanism before the CERD, particularly in regions lacking functional regional human rights courts or in cases involving States that impede traditional forms of human rights abuse adjudication. Increased utilization could contribute significantly to the development and clarification of substantive and procedural human rights law, while reinforcing the universal and inalienable nature of human rights, transcending national boundaries.