The Human Rights Committee—Challenges and Prospects for Enhanced Effectiveness and Integration: A Comment

The comment takes up the discussion by Ivana Jelić and Linus Mührel on the merits and deficits of the UN Human Rights Committee and the options for its reform. It advocates a view that takes contradictions between different perspectives on human rights into account, be they rooted in legal culture or in societal forces. It addresses discourse as the source of legitimacy and normativity of human rights, and therefore agrees with proposals to strengthen the treaty bodies within the framework of existing treaties, but also recalls the conditions of legal and societal discourse on the domestic plane.