Parallel Proceedings before the International Court of Justice and the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

In recent times, claims concerning violations of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination have been brought by States parties to the Convention to the attention of the International Court of Justice, and, for the first time in the course of United Nations human rights treaty bodies, to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Relations between the different mechanisms of the sophisticated compliance control system set up by the Convention have been put to the test. In particular, the Qatar v. United Arab Emirates case raises the complex issue of parallel proceedings which, in the author’s opinion, can be dealt with by solutions offered by the Convention itself, rather than by the lis pendens principle.