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The authors wish to express their thanks to Professor David Kretzmer and to the editors of the Israel Law Review for their valuable comments.
1.
Introduction
The human rights treaty bodies (HRTBs or treaty bodies) stand as professional organs, in contrast to the political organs of the United Nations (UN), which include the General Assembly, the Security Council and the Human Rights Council. They consist of independent experts who are nominated by their own countries, and are directly elected for fixed renewable terms of four years by the states parties to the ten core international human rights conventions. Nomination is based on their recognised competence in human rights in general and in the particular area of the relevant convention. Their main task is to monitor the core international human rights conventions and oversee their implementation, by considering the periodic reports submitted by states parties, considering individual complaints, conducting country inquiries (by those Committees entrusted with this power) and the adoption of general comments on the interpretation of treaty provisions.1
A key element in the operation of the HRTBs is their unbiased and neutral treatment of all states parties to the relevant convention. This can be achieved only by ensuring the independence and impartiality of the treaty body members, as was recently emphasised in the 'Guidelines on the Independence and Impartiality of Members of the Human Rights Treaty Bodies' (the Addis Ababa Guidelines), adopted by the Chairs of the HRTBs at their annual meeting in June 2012 and endorsed by the General Assembly in April 2014.2The Guidelines state,3inter alia, that
[t]he independence and impartiality of members of the human rights treaty bodies is essential for the performance of their duties and responsibilities and require that they serve in their personal capacity. Treaty body members shall not only be independent and impartial, but shall also be seen by a reasonable observer to be so.
We would like to take this as a brief background to a question that seems to intrigue anybody who is familiar with the treaty bodies system as well as with the 'special treatment' that Israel is allegedly accorded by the political UN entities:4can this 'special treatment' also be discerned within the treaty bodies system? Is...