A/HRC/39/58 faces a docket crisis of massive proportions. There also remain substantive questions about how the Court accomplishes its core mandate - protecting the civil and political rights enshrined in the Convention - and whether the procedural framework it uses to achieve that goal needs to be revised in response to changes in the legal and political landscape of human rights protection in Europe.30 On a positive note, however, the backlog has been decreasing since 2014 owing to institutional reforms. Procedural challenges 23. Procedural problems are typically the result of institutional design decisions, subsequent modifications, or day-to-day practices that serve to limit the efficacy or scope of a regional arrangement. While the League of Arab States which was founded in 1945, was the first regional mechanism recognized by the United Nations, it was almost 60 years before member States adopted the Arab Charter on Human Rights. There exists a window of opportunity to further enhance the compatibility of the Charter with international human rights standards. The Arab Human Rights Committee can only receive State reports and issue recommendations. It cannot decide on individual or inter-State complaints. The final draft for the statute of the Arab Court of Human Rights has been revised to restrict access to the Court to States parties only. However, member States can, at their discretion, permit civil society organizations to present cases on behalf of individuals. 24. The Inter-American Court has a special unit dedicated to monitoring compliance with its judgments and the average duration of the cases before it was 20 months in 2016, less than the 24 months in 2014. The Inter-American Commission currently has no strong institutionalized form of follow-up, although it is creating one. However, individual complaints often take too long before the Commission, resulting in a backlog of cases. It can take three or more years for the Commission to forward a petition to the relevant State for an initial response. 31 According to the 2016 annual report of the Commission, it received 2,567 petitions in that year alone, adding to a backlog of thousands of pending cases.32 25. The 11 members of the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights are part-time but fulfil numerous functions, which may limit the capacity of the Commission. Commissioners and judges of the African Court are elected by the African Union to ensure independence. 33 However, some scholars consider the coverage of human rights by the African Charter to be incomplete by international standards. For example, article 6 of the Charter states that “no one may be deprived of his freedom except for reasons and conditions previously laid down by law.” This means that as long as there is a pre-existing law, Governments may deprive people of their freedoms. 34 However, it should be noted that these “clawback” provisions are fairly common in legal language and that the African Commission has so far maintained a strict interpretation of them, thereby preventing their abuse. 26. The ASEAN Charter fails to provide an effective enforcement mechanism, as it continues to emphasize sovereignty, territorial integrity and non-interference in domestic affairs. Thus, the Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights is comprised of government appointees accountable to their Governments, who can remove the appointees at their discretion. It operates by consensus, which gives each State an effective veto over the decisions of the Commission. In fact, the mandate of the Commission does not contain explicit provisions for receiving and investigating complaints of human rights violations. Discussions of complaints take place in closed meetings, so it cannot be confirmed whether and which cases have been discussed. The Commission has yet to take public action in 30 31 32 33 34 10 See Laurence R. Helfer, “Redesigning the European Court of Human Rights: embeddedness as a deep structural principle of the European human rights regime”, European Journal of International Law, vol. 19, No. 1 (2008). Survey response by the Government of the United States. See www.oas.org/en/iachr/docs/annual/2016/TOC.asp. See www.au.int/en/organs/cj. See Sandhiya Singh, “The impact of clawback clauses on human and peoples’ rights in Africa”, African Security Review, vol. 18, No. 4 (2009).