What is it about?
This article examines how the length of experts’ tenure affects their behavior in UN human rights treaty bodies. It shows that time spent on committees shapes experts’ willingness and ability to engage in active representation, including asking critical questions, raising sensitive issues, and intervening more assertively in reviews. The analysis highlights tenure as a key institutional factor that structures how experts perform their role over time.
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Why is it important?
Expert bodies are often treated as collections of interchangeable professionals, yet this study shows that experience within the institution matters. By demonstrating that tenure influences how actively experts represent human rights concerns, the article contributes to debates about expertise, independence, and learning in international organizations. The findings have implications for committee composition, term limits, and expectations about the neutrality and effectiveness of expert monitoring.
Perspectives
This article reflects my interest in the micro dynamics of international institutions and in how roles are learned and enacted over time. Rather than assuming that expertise is fixed at the point of appointment, I focus on how institutional familiarity, confidence, and socialization shape experts’ behavior. The study is motivated by a broader effort to understand how seemingly technical design features, such as term length, can have meaningful consequences for the practice of international human rights oversight.
Professor Sara Beth Kahn-Nisser
Open University of Israel
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Experts’ active representation in the UN treaty bodies: the role of members’ tenure, Policy Studies, February 2025, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/01442872.2025.2460426.
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