An Analysis of the Role of Human Rights Treaty Reservations in International Law

This paper examines five different human rights treaties in order to test the role of reservations in international law. Through the creation of a typology of reservations, which include Domestic Framework, Minor Objection, Oversight, Cultural, Political, and Negation Reservations, this paper tests the typology against three hypotheses: 1) reservations weaken international law, 2) reservations are neutral to international law, and 3) reservations strengthen international law. By classifying reservations on this spectrum of hypotheses, it became possible to determine whether reservations help or hinder the international human rights regime. The most utilized types of reservations were Domestic Framework Reservations, which demonstrates treaty reservations allow for states to engage with the treaties, thus strengthening international law. However, because the reservations also demonstrate a lack of willingness to be bound by an external oversight body, reservations also highlight a flaw of international law. CEDAW proved to be a general outlier because it had 2-6 times the amount of negation and cultural reservations, which could potentially be attributed to the more societal, as opposed to legal, adjustments required of States Parties.