Big Promises , Small Gains : Domestic Effects of Human Rights Treaty Ratification in the Member States of the Gulf Cooperation Council

In recent years, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states have been increasingly willing to ratify United Nations human rights instruments. This article examines the underlying rationales for these ratifications and the limited range and drivers of subsequent domestic reforms post ratification. Drawing on both a quantitative analysis of engagement with the UN treaty bodies and Charter-based mechanisms in over 120 UN reports and qualitative interviews with over sixty-five government officials, members of civil society, National Human Rights Institutions, lawyers, and judges from all six states, this article argues that in the GCC states, UN human rights treaty ratification results from a desire to increase standing in the international community. Treaty ratification has limited effects driven by international socialization and cautious leadership preferences. * Başak Çalı is Associate Professor of International Law at Koç University and Director of Center for Global Public Law (B.S., Ankara, M.A., Essex, Ph.D., Essex). ** Nazila Ghanea is is Associate Professor in International Human Rights Law at the University of Oxford. She serves as Associate of the Oxford Human Rights Hub and is a Fellow of Kellogg College (B.A. Keele, M.A. Leeds, Ph.D. Keele, M.A. Oxon). She serves as a member of the OSCE Advisory Panel of Experts on Freedom of Religion or Belief and on the Board of Trustees of the independent think tank, the Universal Rights Group. She has been a visiting academic at a number of institutions including Columbia and NYU, and previously taught at the University of London and Keele University, UK, and in China. ***Benjamin Jones is Retained Lecturer in Law at Pembroke College, University of Oxford. This article results from research made possible by NPRP grant # 5-804-5-123 from the Qatar National Research Fund (a member of Qatar Foundation). The statements made herein are solely the responsibility of the authors. Vol. 38 22 HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY


I. INTRoDUCTIoN
The development of international human rights treaties has been the central multilateral effort of states in addressing human rights at the international level over the past sixty years. 1 It is a generally accepted axiom that ratification is the first step toward the implementation of international human rights law. The international community places particular emphasis on ratification of the ten core international human rights treaties. 2 Key human rights actors regularly report on and encourage treaty ratifications. Moreover, the issue is regularly raised by the various treaty bodies, special procedure mandate holders, and states taking part in Universal Periodic Review (UPR). 3 Member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) 4 have increasingly moved to ratify these core instruments, particularly since the end of the Cold War and the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Despite these efforts, the domestic rationales and subsequent effects of treaty ratification in the GCC are under-studied and under-theorized. 5 While general sets of factors driving ratification and domestic effects have been explored in the literature globally, little is known about what drives ratification and implementation of human rights treaties in the GCC. More also needs to be understood about why domestic effects of ratification, including the patterns of reservations, vary across the GCC. This article cannot offer a comprehensive answer to all of these questions with respect to all six countries. 6 It aims, however, to offer We also do not seek to address the domestic effects of human rights treaty ratification beyond the ten core treaties of the United Nations. Thus, the following were not considered: the International Labour Organisation Conventions, the Arab Charter on Human Rights, or other bodies of law related to human rights issues, such as international humanitarian law or international refugee law. a broad overview of rationales for ratification. It also explores the extent and motives behind domestic effects of treaties. The article maps the main features of human rights treaty ratification in the region, and argues that human rights treaty ratification comes about due to GCC leaders' concerns to be seen as integrated into the international community. Additionally, small gains emerge after ratification as a combination of international socialization and GCC's leaders' cautious leadership preferences for domestic human rights reform. To support these claims, the article employs an original qualitative dataset based upon interviews carried out in the region with diplomats, policy makers, judges, lawyers, and human rights activists. It also uses a qualitative dataset comprised of coding GCC states' interaction with the UN human rights treaty mechanisms. 7 The article begins by reviewing the existing literature and outlines a working framework of potential drivers for domestic and international action on human rights law in the GCC. Given the limited English-language scholarship on the constitutional jurisprudence of the GCC states, the second section provides a brief outline of the legal and political frameworks of the Gulf states as they pertain to human rights law. In the third section, the commitment of the GCC states to the UN human rights framework and mechanisms is assessed. In the fourth section, the limited domestic effects of human rights treaty ratification are surveyed. It is shown that while the GCC states' ratification of, and engagement with, UN human rights treaties has increased over recent decades, domestic effects of treaty ratification are limited, but also vary by country and issue area despite regime similarities. Secondary effects, such as institution building and further ratification, which 7. Over sixty-five interviews were carried out with government officials, lawyers, judges, members of civil society, diplomats, and ambassadors based in the GCC countries between November 2012 and May 2014. We carried out this first-hand research in Qatar, Kuwait, and Oman. In addition to these interviews, we invited governmental and nongovernmental actors to two different sets of focus group-workshops along with indepth one-on-one interviews with each of them. They attended from all six GCC states. Due to our commitment to our interviewees' requests for anonymity, we indicate all these interviews as having taken place in Qatar, and do not indicate which of the six GCC states the interviewee comes from in the footnote. The interview data we draw from, therefore, is far more balanced in terms of GCC representation than the footnotes would suggest. These were supplemented by interviews carried out with diplomats and human rights experts in Geneva and NGOs in London. All interviews are on file with the authors. The quantitative dataset consisted of an aggregation of every substantive recommendation made to the GCC states by the Treaty Bodies following state reporting; by the Special Rapporteurs; by Working Groups following visits to the states; and by other states through the UPR procedure. These recommendations were then grouped into one of four categories depending on the nature of the reform called for (legislative reforms, international or UN engagement measures, policy developments, and capacity building initiatives). Novel recommendations were distinguished from recommendations that substantively rehearsed existing recommendations so that longitudinal pressure could be assessed. Each of the legislative and international engagement recommendations were then followed up to identify positive delivery on the recommendation, provisional or partial commitment to delivery, or rejection of the recommendation (either by explicit statement or through contradictory action). The database was current as of April 2014. HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY have lower costs, are more widespread than primary effects, such as legislative changes and judicial application of UN human rights treaties. The article concludes by discussing exceptional areas of domestic legislative action (particularly in the area antitrafficking and in access to services for children of noncitizens and children of women citizens married to noncitizen fathers) and key drivers of limited human rights reform.

II. RATIoNLES BEHIND DECISIoNS To RATIfY AND SUBSEQUENT EffECTS of RATIfICATIoN
Over the past decade, the academic study of the rationales behind human rights ratification and their subsequent domestic effects has produced important theoretical knowledge in relation to a range of different countries, regions, and issue areas. 8 States ratify human rights treaties for a diverse number of reasons. On the one hand, ratification may reflect a sincere intent to give effect to the content of the treaty as an end in itself; while on the other hand, states may ratify human rights treaties insincerely. Treaty ratification may serve as a means to confirm, to boost, or to create other international or domestic benefits without a principled commitment to give effect to the treaties' content as a whole. 9 Empirically, it is hard to disentangle sincere and insincere motivations. Given that UN human rights treaties are complex legal texts with multiple provisions, states may have sincere intent with regard to some provisions at the time of ratification, while other may not. A diverse range of international, regional, and domestic factors prompt leaders to sign and then to ratify a particular human rights treaty. Additionally, the presence of international pressures for human rights reforms, the existing domestic legal and political institutional structures, and the ability of domestic actors to operate within these structures may condition the type of domestic effects that human rights treaties subsequently have. 10  domestic outcomes of treaty ratification. This may be the case both when original intent is sincere, insincere, or partially sincere. Sometimes ratification leads to negligible effects. 11 In other cases, ratification may produce intended or unintended consequences leading to important improvements in human rights developments on the ground. 12 Recent scholarship on domestic effects of UN treaty ratification suggests ratification effects are to be largely conditional on domestic opportunity structures. 13 UN human rights treaties have the most effect where there is strong and sustained elite leadership, civil society mobilization, and support by the domestic judiciary both during and after ratification. 14 In countries where these factors are not prevalent, human rights treaties are bound to have negligible post ratification effects. 15 The insights of international relations scholarship are an important starting point for the empirical study of the GCC region. These theoretical insights, however, largely stem from comparative studies in other regions or larger datasets, and need to be contextualized to take into account the regional characteristics of the GCC states. 16 All GCC states are hereditary monarchies with rich natural resources and economic wealth. Religious figures and conservative civil society members dominate the constitutional and legal arrangements in GCC states. These states are also known for their ruling bargain arrangements formed on the basis of wealth transfers to citizens. 17 While the general wisdom of factors affecting treaty ratification are relevant, the sui generis characteristics of the GCC states help develop more nuanced factors to understand treaty ratification and its effects. From across these literatures, two sets of factors are distilled: one that conditions ratification and another that shapes domestic implementation of human rights treaties in the GCC.

A. Commitment factors
The first (referred to as "commitment factors") consists of four political, domestic, and international factors that are mostly likely to influence a GCC state's decision to consent to (and thus ratify) an international human rights instrument. 2. International acculturation offers incentives to ratify because states seek to be identified or associated with the international community and see ratification as a means to obtain a modern or a legitimate state in the eyes of the international community. 20 Treaty ratification may also ensure that the state will not be regarded as an "outlier" state in the international community. 21 3. Domestic political or societal factors refer to the existence, or absence, of demands from political or civil society forces. Ratification (or nonratification) of human rights treaties may emerge as domestic political concessions from local demands or as a means to respond to, to preempt, or to deflect domestic political or societal pressures. 22 4. Domestic leadership preferences is a factor that links human rights treaty ratification with the domestic preferences of the ruling elites. A state-building and institutional-building program, or a decision by the ruler to lock-in preferences of future leaders to that program might be a leading factor in ratification decisions of hereditary rulers.

B. Domestic Effect factors
The second set (referred to as "domestic effect factors") is strongly influenced by global level political science literature. The literature emphasizes that strong elite leadership, civil society mobilization, and support from the domestic judiciary are important for the development of domestic rights. 23 It is important to apply these global theories with a deeper understanding of the regional context, as other regional studies of human rights domestic effects have also done. 24 In light of the combined political science literatures, eight factors have been identified that are important to the post ratification effects of UN rights treaties in the GCC. 4. Regional acculturation refers to how regional dynamics matter in human rights law behavior. 30 The literature on the GCC also points to the interconnectedness of governance in this region. 31  The overlap between the two sets of factors reflects the central importance of domestic drivers and interstate pressure to both ratification and implementation processes. In the following sections these quantitative and qualitative datasets are used to assess the relative impact of the various factors in ratification and subsequent effect. Before doing this, however, a brief overview of the domestic constitutional framework of the GCC states is provided. 33

III. CoNSTITUTIoNAL, LEGISLATIvE, AND PoLITICAL fRAMEwoRkS of THE GCC STATES AS CLoSED DUALIST SYSTEMS
After close analysis, the six GCC states exhibit important differences in their legal and political systems. However, despite differing sizes, populations, political trajectories, and domestic legal frameworks, these states also share important historical, cultural, and institutional commonalities which make the GCC inquiry an important one to pursue regarding treaty ratification. All states, with the exception of Saudi Arabia, became independent between 1961 and 1971. The GCC states are new nation states and are generally "latecomers" to the UN human rights treaty system. Only Saudi Arabia was present at the time of the drafting and adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 37 All six states are hereditary monarchies (though there is a broad variation in constitutional form between the strong parliamentary tradition of Kuwait's constitutional monarchy and the federal monarchy of the UAE). All have shown a commitment to having some form of citizen representation 38 and all have adopted a written constitution or a basic law since 1962. 39 The six states together constitute: an area of approximately 2,500,000 square kilometers; a population of around forty-nine million people; 40 and "high income non-OECD states" 41 with a mean GDP per capita of $33,300. 42 The migrant worker population is an absolute majority in Kuwait, Qatar, and United Arab Emirates. 43 About 40 percent of the total population in the GCC region is comprised of migrant workers, establishing the GCC as one of the top twenty receivers of immigrants in the world. 44 The GCC was established in 1981. As the Secretariat General of the GCC outlines, the 1981 GCC Charter established the objectives of: coordination and integration towards unity between the GCC member states; strengthening relations; and formulating similar regulations, (including legislative and administrative affairs). 45 The GCC does not have a subregional human rights monitoring mechanism of its own, but the GCC states are all parties to the Arab League and the newly established human rights mechanisms under the Arab Charter. 46 39. Id. These constitutions were adopted as follows: Bahrain In Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar, international treaties come into force once ratified and published in the official "gazette." 47 Once "gazetted" international treaty provisions have legal force equivalent to national legislation. 48 However, each constitution makes clear that human rights treaties are part of a special category that are not self-executing and require the adoption of national legislation to become directly applicable under national law. 49 The provisions in all three constitutions indicate that treaties "concerning the . . . public or private rights of citizens only come into force when 'made by a law.'" 50 Oman formally offers the strongest legal status to international law and provides that treaties have the force of law once ratified. 51 The legal status of human rights treaties is unclear in the Saudi Arabian Basic Law where international agreements are put into effect through local legal integration. In Saudi Arabia, no treaty gains force as a result of royal decrees, 52 and gazetting is required to bring a treaty into force. 53 However, even once gazetted the legal effect of any treaty is moderated by the Qura'n and Shari'a law, which are described in the constitution as "the ultimate sources of reference for this Law and the other laws of the State." 54 In the UAE, only the Supreme Council of the Union, constituted of the leaders of each of the seven emirates, 55 has the authority to sign and to ratify international treaties that affect the UAE as a Union. 56 After the federal decision to ratify, it falls on the Government of each Emirate to integrate the treaty provisions into their local laws (though this is done with the supervision of the Union Council). 57 The effect of all of the above is that all six states are functionally dualist legal systems for the purposes of human rights treaties, and that the domestic effects of UN human rights treaties are strongly in need of specific legislation giving effect to each provision of the UN human rights treaty in the domestic context. The dualist construction of the effects of international law 47 in the domestic systems also suggests that there remain significant practical ambiguities on which individual state courts give force to treaties even after promulgated in relevant constitutional provisions. Interviews with judges and lawyers from Oman, Kuwait, and Qatar confirmed that even where incorporated into domestic law, treaty commitments do not enjoy the status and weight of Qanoon. 58 Across the GCC, Islamic Shari'a is identified as a main source, 59 principle source, 60 or basis for legislation. 61 These strong legal references to Islamic Shari'a in the GCC member states mean that even when a UN human rights treaty is incorporated in the domestic legal system-the key implementers of the treaties-executive organs or legislative organs, may still have concerns about the legislation's compatibility with Islamic Shari'a. The presence of Shari'a courts or judges only trained in Shari'a law further offer a practical weight and significance to Shari'a law in interpreting legislation.
A number of the legal systems have seen recent initiatives oriented towards reform and codification in the fields of criminal law, civil law, commercial law, and private international law. Along with this substantive modernization, court systems in the GCC have undergone important reforms, especially since the 1990s, with a major theme in establishing specialized tribunals and quasijudicial administrative bodies alongside Shari'a courts. 62 In Kuwait, there are no Shari'a courts and all disputes are handled under the statutory court system. 63 In Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, and the UAE, Shari'a courts exist. However, these courts are earmarked only for personal status disputes between Muslims. 64  the Shari'a courts are much broader, covering all disputes relating to land, to family, to personal injury claims, and to criminal cases. 65 There are two constitutional courts in the GCC region allowing individuals to litigate their constitutional rights in Kuwait and Bahrain. In both states, constitutional courts have strong judicial powers and laws no longer have the force of law once they are deemed unconstitutional. The Qatari constitutional court is outlined in the Constitution; however, is not yet operational. 66 In Oman, talks regarding the establishment of a constitutional court are ongoing. 67 The UAE Supreme Court also carries out constitutional review, but there is no access to individual petitioners. 68 The Kuwaiti Constitutional Court, the oldest in the region, 69 exhibits some degree of willingness to give legal effect to human rights treaties. It came to international attention in 2000 when it rejected a plea by its disenfranchised women to enjoy the same political rights as their male counterparts and attain the right to vote. 70 Since the late 2000s, however, the court has taken gender equality issues more seriously and in 2009, it granted women the right to obtain their own passports without the consent of their husbands and guardians. 71 It also ruled that female lawmakers are not required to wear the hijab or traditional Muslim headscarf in Parliament. 72 More recently, in December 2013, the constitutional court dealt with the right to freedom of expression concerning a journalist's Twitter comments and found that Article 25 of the Criminal Code that criminalizes any expression that "objects to the rights and authorities of the emir or faults him" was constitutional. 73 Overall, the Kuwait constitutional court in the GCC is the best example of a functioning constitutional tribunal, and is recognized as such by regional elites. As one interviewee referring to the gender equality case stated, "The Kuwaiti Constitutional Court is not a theoretical court for us." 74 More promisingly still, there is some evidence that some of the decisions of the Kuwait constitutional court granting gender equality might have had a trickle-down effect on administrative courts. 75 In Bahrain, the constitutional court 76 can exercise a priori constitutional review of legislation only upon a request made by the King. A posteriori judicial review is exercised upon the request of the Prime Minister or the President of the Consultative Council or the President of the Council of Representatives; or upon an ex propio motu request from any court, or upon a request of any of the parties to a case brought before any court. 77 In its early case law, the Bahraini constitutional court emphasized the importance of constitutions over legislation, argued for the exceptionality of expropriations in protection of individuals' property rights. 78 The 2012 Court, however, rejected a challenge to the constitutionality of provisions in the National Security Act without discussing the compatibility of the Act with the ICCPR commitments. 79

GCC Involvement with the UN Rights framework
As of 2014, there have been thirty-three ratifications of the ten core UN human rights treaties by the GCC states. 80 Figure   75. In August 2011, a number of female applicants separately filed lawsuits at the administrative court, contending that the ministry's decision to consider only male applicants (for becoming a prosecutor) was unconstitutional.   Looking across the GCC there are some commonalities in ratification timing and sequencing. In terms of timing, the first four states to ratify CAT did so in two and a half years. The three states to ratify the first two CRC OPs (Bahrain, Kuwait, and Oman) all did so within a month. In both instances these ratifications came several years after the UN General Assembly originally adopted the instruments. In relation to the most recent of the core UN treaties (CRPD), all six of the states ratified within seven years of the instrument's passage, making this the fastest complete ratification by a significant margin (CEDAW took almost thirty years, ICERD thirty-seven years, and CRC just over seven years). In terms of sequencing and despite the instruments being promulgated twenty-four years apart, ICERD and CRC were the first two instruments to be ratified by all six of the GCC states (with half ratifying CRC first and half ICERD).
There are, however, also clear divergences. Only Bahrain and Kuwait have ratified the twin covenants that sit at the heart of the UN rights framework-the ICESCR and the ICCPR. ICERD ratifications took place across the 1960s (Kuwait), 1970s (Qatar and UAE), 1990s (Bahrain and Saudi) and 2000s (Oman). 83 Some states joined certain instruments long after others had, the UAE ratified CAT twelve years after all the other GCC states. There are also variations in periods of peak ratification between the individual states. As Figure 4 shows, for each of the states, other than the UAE, there has been a period of heightened ratification activity, with the majority of treaties ratified by each state in under a decade.  These periods have little connection with domestic constitutional reform in the GCC countries. Considering the dates on which constitutions have been passed or amended, only Bahrain's 2002 constitution falls within (or close to) its period of ratification. Looking at alternative major international or domestic political events that may have helped precipitate ratifications, the clearest connection is in the case of Kuwait. Its period of peak ratification began in 1991, the same year that the country had been liberated by international coalition forces after the Iraqi invasion six months earlier. Saudi Arabia's first cluster of ratifications followed shortly after the first Gulf War and King Abdullah's (then Crown Prince Abdullah) assumption of power. In Bahrain, Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa's rise to power in 1999 saw the ratification of the ICESCR and the ICCPR alongside domestic political reforms under the National Action Charter-actions that came against a backdrop of demands from opposition forces. In Qatar, ratifications increased after Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani's consolidation of power following his 1995 overthrow of his father. Oman amongst all the GCC states has remained a late ratifier of human rights treaties compared to the rest of the region. It is interesting considering it has had consistent leadership through Sultan Qaboos since 1970. After the Arab Spring there has been three ratifications across the GCC, 84 but no strong evidence of a connection was uncovered.
There is also little correlational evidence to suggest that recommendations by the UN treaty bodies to ratify additional instruments have been effective in precipitating ratifications. In total there have been just under seventy treaty body recommendations and twelve special rapporteur recommendations, and more than fifty recommendations from other states during the UPR process calling specifically for further ratifications. 85 The great majority of these recommendations have not been followed, however, and most ratifications have not been preceded by any recommendation calling for that ratification. 86 In the instances where ratification has followed a recommendation, only Bahrain's ratification of CEDAW and ICCPR, and Qatar's ratification of the first two optional protocols to CRC have occurred within a year of a relevant recommendation. 87  has drawn an explicit connection between a ratification recommendation and a subsequent ratification. 88 Together, the data on timing and sequencing suggests that the GCC region is committed to children and those with disabilities, and to a lesser extent, the antiracism rights discourse-especially more so than in other areas such as women's rights. The divergences in the timing and sequencing of data, however, also suggest that despite regional trends in action it is state-level or international system dynamics, rather than regional GCC-wide dynamics, that dominate the selection and timing of ratification decisions.
A partial explanation for the low impact of external pressure arising out of our interview data is the largely absent international pressure, be it multilateral or unilateral, in connection with UN rights treaties. 89 For example, the GCC's key security partner, the United States, has ratified few UN human rights treaties. The GCC states are also not moved by calls for ratification coming from the UN mechanisms. Along the same lines, the GCC states generally do not have domestic human rights treaty ratification lobbies outside the government structures to exert pressure on decisions to ratify.
In light of this data, the GCC region's decision to ratify treaties are primarily motivated, not by international pressure, but by international acculturation and domestic leadership preferences or, less commonly-as in the case of Bahrain, concessions to bottom-up domestic demands.
International acculturation emphasizes a desire to be a "member in good standing" in the international community of modern states and, in particular, a desire "not to be seen as an outcast" from the international community. 90 Selective UN human rights treaty ratification offers GCC states a way to confirm membership in the international community and the ability to fulfill the desire to belong-all at limited practical cost for domestic regimes. UN treaty ratification with reservations enables states to signal different messages to international and domestic audiences. In one interview from Kuwait we were told that ratification of the ICCPR and ICESCR "was our way of saying thank you to the international community after the invasion." 91 In a different interview with a senior government official in Oman, the late ratifications of UN human rights treaties was explained on the basis that "Oman did not want to look too isolated from the rest." 92 Further interviews with key stakeholders also emphasized this perceived, albeit intangible, benefit of selective human rights treaty ratification. Regardless of how selective and loaded with reservations, UN human rights treaty ratification is regarded as confirming legitimate statehood as well as avoiding the international isolation of the region.
In the cases of Qatar and Oman, alongside acculturation, strong domestic leadership preferences for ratifying human rights treaties appear to have developed out of a desire to use ratification to lend support to domestic state-building initiatives. In one interview in Qatar, the interviewee regarded the ratification of CRC and CEDAW as a green light from the Emir to provide policy guidance to domestic social policy institutions. 93 Ratification of human rights treaties were interpreted as part of the vision and the direction of the state bureaucracy.
By contrast, in Kuwait, the parliamentary system enjoys a veto power over government, alongside a more entrenched Constitution and more stable domestic institutions providing an alternate point of reference. Bahrain is also different where leadership preferences have been mediated by the effects of the opposition against the ruling leadership since the early 2000s. Ratification of human rights treaties, which correspond to calls for domestic political and social reform in Bahrain, are part of a framework of concessions offered by the ruling elites to opposition forces in addition to protecting the Bahraini state from international isolation. 94 Overall, the reasons for ratifying may be distilled into three categories as depicted in the table below, where the international acculturation is a common present feature whereas interstate pressure is a common "absent feature." 93. Interview  None of these motivational factors for ratification, however, offer a fully negative or an overly positive prospect for the subsequent implementation of human rights treaties in the region. This is because while international acculturation may sometimes be a first step toward a deeper socialization of human rights norms, it can also be a mere standalone act. Once states calculate that they have gained the intangible benefits from ratification, they may lose interest in implementing and realizing their treaty obligations. Domestic leadership preferences at the time of ratification, too, are not always stable or transferable to the realm of domestic implementation. Furthermore, GCC states' reservations to UN human rights treaties show they selectively ratify these treaties.
Excluding reservations that are related to the nonrecognition of Israel (which have been entered by Bahrain, Kuwait and the UAE), Figure 5 depicts the current number of reservations entered by the GCC states (according to number of subsections reserved). It also shows the balance between general reservations, which apply to the interpretation, implementation, and force of the instrument as a whole, and specific reservations, which seek to limit the application of a particular provision in the treaty. 95 The GCC regions' reservations to UN human rights treaties reflect both domestic negotiations amongst key domestic constituents and the core political and legal sensitivities of the ruling elite in the GCC countries leading up to ratification of human rights treaties. Reservations also help to explain some of the limited domestic effects of UN human rights treaties after ratification. The presence of general reservations place significant obstacles in the way of delivering domestic effects of human rights treaties, both in terms of their traction as a tool for policy change and as a means for advancing changes in judicial practice. A general reservation makes the place and relevance of a UN human rights treaty unclear in domestic legal and political settings. General reservations may also inhibit domestic actors in adopting a proactive stance on human rights treaty implementation. Equally, reservations to treaty provisions setting out the full range of obligations for each human right in the treaty operate like general reservations. In the case of the GCC, reservations entered to Articles 2 of the ICCPR and the ICESCR by Kuwait and reservations entered to Article 2 of CEDAW by Bahrain, Qatar, and the UAE have this potential limiting effect. 96 Of all the treaties, CEDAW has attracted the most reservations from the GCC as well as across the states. 98 All of the states have entered reservations against Article 9 (concerning the equal rights of women and men to acquire, change and retain nationality and in particular, equal rights of women with respect to the nationality of their children); Article 16(1) (concerning the equal rights of women in family life); and Article 16(2) (on child marriages, minimum age to marriage and compulsory registration of marriages of women to have the freedom to choose their residence and domicile). 99 CRC is second behind CEDAW regarding reservations; with Article 7 (the right of children to a nationality); Article 14 (children's right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion); and Article 21 (permission of an adoption system) attracting the most reservations. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait maintain general reservations to the entirety of CRC but, in sharp contrast, Bahrain has not entered any reservations in relation to the instrument.
These reservations, and in particular the general reservations, have been the subject of significant pressure from the treaty bodies. Saudi Arabia has been subject to particular criticism. The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination asserted that "[t]he broad and imprecise nature of [Saudi Arabia's] general reservation [to ICERD] raises concern as to its compatibility 99. Saudi Arabia does not have a reservation to this provision, but it has a general reservation to CEDAW. All reservation data for this is compiled from the United Nations Treaty collection, supra note 1. with the object and purpose of the Convention." 100 Similarly, the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women worried that the general reservation to CEDAW "does not clearly define the extent to which Saudi Arabia accepts its international obligations." 101 The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women stated that the reservation was "drawn so widely that it is contrary to the object and purpose of the Convention." 102 The Committee on the Rights of the Child opined that it was "concerned that the broad and imprecise nature of the state party's general reservation [against CRC] potentially negates many of the Convention's provisions and raises concern as to its compatibility with the object and purpose of the Convention, as well as the overall implementation of the Convention." 103 Similar complaints have been made regarding the state's reservation to the CRC. 104 Saudi Arabia's practice of general reservations aside, the pattern of reservations to CEDAW and the CRC in the GCC region show that the ratifying states have concerns regarding how Shari'a law views nationality, equality in family life, and the adoption of children. Questions regarding a child's right to nationality, regardless of the citizenship of the child's father, are connected with concerns about the political economy of citizenship in the GCC. As one interviewee stated, "Nationality law is about money, not religion, as Shari'a does not have laws concerning nationality." 105 Of particular significance in contrast to these reservations to CEDAW and CRC, is that no state in the GCC region has entered any reservations to the CRPD, which offer extensive rights to persons with disabilities, including equal rights in marriage and family life (Article 23), right to a nationality (Article 18), and equal rights of women with disabilities (Article 6). The apparent effect of this is that women and children with disabilities enjoy protections that they would otherwise be prevented from claiming because of the reservations entered into in the CEDAW and the CRC. Whether it would be possible to enforce such claims is, of course, a separate question.
The most interesting aspect of the GCC reservations is the occasional willingness by some of the states in the region to reconsider and lift reservations. Bahrain, Qatar, and Kuwait have all lifted reservations. Bahrain lifted its CAT reservation concerning the competencies of the Committee against Torture under Article 20. 106 Kuwait lifted its reservation to the voting rights of women, after a long political and constitutional battle for women's suffrage. 107 Oman has removed reservations to articles on adoption, transfer of nationality, separation of children from parents, and the rights of minorities or indigenous children to their culture, language, and religion. Qatar has gone further still in lifting multiple reservations from three separate treaties. These related to Optional Protocol to CRC on the sale of children, child prostitution, and child pornography (CP-CRC-SC), CRC, 108 and CAT. More significantly in the cases of CRC and CAT, Qatar lifted or qualified its general reservations. While each of these reservation removals followed a specific recommendation from the relevant treaty body, they were mostly after some delay. In the case of general reservations, there was a gap of more than five years between the recommendation and reservation change (the Committee on the Rights of the Child called for narrowing of reservations in November 2001), 109  Instead, the motivation for removal appears to have stemmed from the presence of human rights treaty champions within Qatar's domestic institutions who had disagreed with the entering of these general reservations in the first place. 112 The human rights treaty champions, aided by recommendations from the UN treaty bodies, therefore, succeeded in reopening the domestic bargain for remaining in the UN human rights treaties. 113 As one Qatari interviewee stated, "Once the CRC was ratified, we were able to show that important aspects of our culture and religion were not suddenly undermined as the conservatives have suggested at the time of ratification." 114 Overall, while there is core common political ground and regard to be integrated with the international system among the GCC states, alongside cultural and religious cohesion, commonalities in approach to UN rights treaties is not all that can be observed. The variety in political dynamics between GCC states have left the doors open for significant differences in the timing and motivations of UN human rights treaty ratification. Ratifications with broad reservations may lead to some cynicism regarding the strength of commitment of the various state administrations to the UN rights systems. However, the willingness in some instances to narrow reservations show that there is certainly some ongoing domestic consideration of the human rights treaties, and how they may interact with the domestic legal orders. In this regard, some of the GCC states appear to be more active in their engagement with the content of the instruments than other states outside of the region. In the next section, we assess the extent to which these international agreements have had any domestic effect.

Iv. DoMESTIC EffECTS of HUMAN RIGHTS TREATY RATIfICATIoN IN THE GCC
In this section, we shall take "domestic effects" as a broad concept, covering a diverse set of influences including constitutional reform, legislative change, judicial application, institution building, civil society mobilization, and other policy initiatives. We categorize domestic effects into two types: • "Primary effects" are domestic changes that take place through legislation and court decisions after ratifying a treaty • "Secondary effects" involve increased socialization in the system, institution building, and civil society mobilization and activity which may then enable further primary changes in the long run.
As we discuss below, secondary effects that impose low costs on the leaders are more common than primary ones. In addition, primary effects are rare and constitute small gains. Of the eight factors identified above as leading to or hampering domestic effects of UN human rights treaties, the factors of international socialization and domestic leadership emerge as the most significant drivers for domestic secondary effects. With respect to primary effects, we identify domestic leadership preferences and interstate pressure as driving small gains, with political economy, domestic legal constitutional rules, and regional acculturation as hampering primacy effects. Domestic pressures from affluent groups close to leadership circles play a limited, but still important role in furthering issue areas. INGO pressure (although important to increase the rise of ratifications), thus far has not been significant in domestic effects. HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY The foremost "secondary effect" of UN treaty ratification for GCC member states is the increase of ministries and bureaucracies that participate in the implementation debates, and therefore, become socialized into applying the human rights framework to domestic issue areas. 116 The scope of this secondary effect, however, is limited to actors that take a direct role in UN meetings, and primary effects in domestic policy depend on the will and leverage of this newly emerging "UN treaty body reporting bureaucracy." In Qatar, for example, interviews suggest that the appointment of a member of the ruling Al-Thani family to lead the UN human rights reporting process has resulted in some primary effects, including the lifting of reservations. 117 Similarly, a human rights bureaucrat close to the ruler in another country stated, "When in Geneva, CRC asked us why we did not have free primary education. When we got back home, I pushed for this and succeeded." 118 A key secondary effect that has taken place in GCC states has been the creation of National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs). Four GCC states have created NHRIs as follow ups to their engagement with the UN treaties and sustained calls for their establishment. 119   Kuwait also made changes to include human rights education in school curricula after instituting a special committee to develop educational materials on human rights, democracy, and constitution law in 2000. 126 Different domestic factors in the GCC region lead to the variation in the creation of NHRIs and their compatibility with the Paris Principles. In Kuwait, a key difficulty in passing a law on an NHRI has been the ongoing problems in the parliamentary regime, where vetoes in Parliament have been a persistent challenge over the past decade. As one interviewee put it, "There is neither a strong opposition nor a strong support of an NHRI, but if every time one group supports it, the other groups are sure to veto it." 127 In the UAE and Saudi Arabia, legal constraints manifest themselves in the struggle 120 to create an independent institution outside of the governance regime. 128 The federal structure in the UAE makes this a particularly difficult undertaking. The legal and constitutional factors in Saudi Arabia are also coupled with the lack of a strong leadership preference for the creation of Paris Principle compliant institutions alongside lack of support for these institutions in the traditional constituents of the religious establishment. Human rights activist interviewees state that the Bahraini NHRI was established in reaction to opposition groups' demands for more political and public participation, in the early 2000s, as part of the concessions to the opposition forces. 129 In Qatar and Oman, on the other hand, human rights bureaucrats consider that the creation of the NHRIs and further attempts to improve them in terms of their independence were part of the leadership state-building programs of Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani and Sultan Qaboos respectively. 130 While the creation of NHRIs does not necessarily create a deeper implementation of human rights treaties, NHRIs do have the potential for magnifying the voice of UN human rights treaties domestically. The Qatar National Human Rights Commission, for example, in its annual report, regularly mirrors the recommendations of UN human rights treaty bodies. The Commission calls for the ratification of the ICCPR and the ICESCR, 131 which specifically mirrors the recommendations of ICERD. The Commission also calls for the abolishment of the kafalah system of regulating migrant workers and for ratification of the ICRMW. 132 Interviews on the primary effects of NHRIs and other governmental human rights entities in the GCC countries point to the promotional functions of these entities-often in the form of organizing training seminars and workshops for governmental actors, civil society organizations, and the public at large. 133 The Qatar NHRI has a complaints mechanism where individual complaints received are raised with relevant governmental agencies. None of the other existing NHRIs provide legal representation of victims or take cases to court. They also do not openly condemn individual human rights violations or write reports on situations. Thus far, only one NHRI has submitted a report to the United Nations human rights mechanisms (Qatar's NHRI to CEDAW). 134 One group of interviewees from Bahrain, Qatar, and Oman also highlighted the legitimating functions of the establishment of NHRIs on existing government policies. They also suggested, however, that the "creation of NHRIs is not an end in itself, but must be a means to an end in the region. In terms of primary legislative effects, the overall record of the GCC shows incremental domestic effects. In the GCC, legislative changes require the fullest support of the ruling regime, who also consider pressure from strong domestic constituencies with significant religious or economic power. Demands from the UN human rights treaty mechanisms for legislative reform have been a dominant call, encompassing all recommendations. However, in the vast majority of cases GCC states had silent or ambivalent responses to such demands (see Figure 8). 136 Figure 8 below indicates the number of instances in which a legislative recommendation has been followed by legislative action, a negative response, a provisional step, or where no clear evidence of any response by the GCC states could be found. Between the states there are significant variations. Bahrain and Qatar have been most responsive to such recommendations with more than twice the number of equivocal (i.e. positive or negative) responses than Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, or the UAE (all of which have reacted to less than a quarter of recommendations for legislative reform). Qatar has also had the highest proportion of positive responses (>20 percent) and the highest proportion of positive or provisional actions (>40 percent). Bahrain also has over 40 percent positive or provisional actions but the highest proportion of negative responses (~20 percent, slightly ahead of Qatar). Among the less responsive states, the UAE has the highest proportion of negative responses compared with all active responses, and the fewest positive responses of any the states. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have very similar numbers, both with less than 25 percent responsiveness but with more positive than negative actions.
Caution is needed for positive responses for two reasons. First, as with the above data, the figure demonstrates only that a particular measure was followed after a treaty body recommendation at some point. It does not demonstrate causation. Second, the legislation that is promoted as a positive response by the state may not be fit for this purpose. Regarding the possibility of causation, there are many instances of states putting forward new legislation in their national reports as fulfilling the treaty requirements, but only in a few cases are these legislative acts directly connected to previous treaty body recommendations. 138 Even where there are attributions to changes in legislation, they are mostly general and do not refer back to a specific recommendation. There are a very small number of counter-examples, such as Qatar's incorporation of the definition of torture from CAT. 139 In most cases, however, state reports have put forward legislation that, while in the broad area of the relevant Convention's purview, have no relationship to the actual recommendations contained in previous reports. 140 Many of the legislative reform recommendations made to each of the GCC states have been shared across the states. All have received calls to pass legislation prohibiting gender and racial discrimination, 141 to provide equality in access to citizenship for children, 142 to review labor laws with a view to abolish the kafalah regime, 143 to review juvenile justice law, 144 and to repeal any laws that may justify corporal punishment. 145 Some treaty  5  7  11  12  Kuwait  7  4  10  58  Oman  4  1  3  18  Qatar  16  11  13  25  Saudi  4  2  3  26  UAE  1  3  3 151 and Kuwait in 2013. 152 Interview data shows that the leading factor in moving swiftly with regard to this legislative recommendation is the US bilateral pressure on the GCC states (a process given a public face in the US Department of State's annual Trafficking in Persons ranking of all countries in the world).

Figure 9. US TiP Rankings
Apart from the issue of trafficking, the GCC states have not taken legislative action in pressing areas of common concern in the fields of discrimination, the rights of noncitizens, and the rights of children. Furthermore, the GCC-level decision to coordinate laws concerning domestic workers has slowed down rather than facilitating the implementation of UN treaty body recommendations.
GCC countries openly rejected review of nationality laws allowing for women to pass their citizenship to their children. In Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar, there is a trend toward granting equal rights to services, such as ac-cess to government subsidies for schooling, for children of female citizens married to noncitizens and allowing unmarried women to receive benefits in the form of interest free loans, which are earmarked as wedding gifts for married women. 153 Domestic pressure from women in prominent families, who are close to the ruling elites, best explains this "different status but equal access" small gains approach in GCC states. As one interviewee, a member of a prominent Qatari family explained, "It is very hard for the ruler to argue that my son is not to get free schooling because I'm married to a Saudi." 154 Small gains are harder to acquire in areas where the hampering effects of political economy and the presence of closed legal systems are prevalent. Calls for reform of labor laws are one such pocket of resistance. Despite the increased INGO pressure, in particular with respect to rights of domestic workers 155 in this field, no significant change has yet come about in the region. The kafalah system continues to hamper the enjoyment of economic, social, and civil rights of migrant workers. Migrant workers with low wages are vulnerable since they do not even enjoy freedom of movement due to exit visa laws. They cannot apply for family reunification as their incomes do not allow them to sponsor their spouses and children. In the GCC region, only Bahrain has passed reforms that provide workers with the right to change their employer without the employer's consent, 156 but this is regarded by some as a tactic in the face of rising opposition from Shia citizens. 157 In Saudi Arabia and Qatar, there is also a requirement for an employer-issued exit visa. 158 Despite strong INGO pressure, the political economy of migration coupled with a lack of domestic pressure has led to lagging reforms. Political economy further plays an important role in GCC states that do not respond to recommendations to extend citizenship to stateless persons and to recognize and grant legal status to refugees.
The closed legal and constitutional frameworks outlined in Section II hamper primary effects of UN human rights treaties in a number of ways. First, the legal culture makes decision makers more reluctant to codify con-cepts such as racial or gender discrimination on the grounds that no specific legislation is needed to give effect to nondiscrimination under Shari'a legal culture. 159 Second, calls to end corporal punishment or other inhuman and degrading treatment face objections since some Shari'a law interpretations approach sentencing 160 and father's rights and duties in a family differently. 161 In the field of family law, recommendations face similar obstacles. Recommendations concerning changes to laws with regard to the marriage age for women, repealing guardianship laws for women, and allowing equality of access to women in marriage and divorce laws largely do not enjoy the support of the GCC countries. 162 The inaction of the courts reflects these limitations with little evidence of active use of UN human rights treaties. There is scant awareness of UN human rights treaties as legal authorities applicable in judicial proceedings. The lawyers interviewed across the GCC states did not regard the UN human rights treaties as a litigation tool to defend the rights of their clients. On the contrary, one prominent lawyer said, "[i]n order to protect the rights of my client, it would be wiser not to make references to the UN human rights treaties." 163 When government officials across the GCC were interviewed, their responses were that there were no legal obstacles to using UN human rights treaties in domestic courts. Despite this, the judicial perception was to the contrary with one interviewee explaining: "if you want me to use UN human rights standards, then there must be legislation telling me exactly what to do. It is not my job to turn treaties into law it is the job of the government." 164 The lack of references to the binding or persuasive authority of human rights treaties in the case law of the GCC courts supports the stronghold of dualism as the dominant approach to UN treaties among the judiciary. 165 In effect, the dualist paradigm is so strong that even 159 UN treaties incorporated into domestic law through royal decrees do not get traction in the courts. Domestic civil society actors and national human rights institutions might be expected to close this gap, but restrictive association laws and administrative frameworks have severely limited this. In the GCC countries, local human rights organizations are restricted in number and constrained in their activities 166 or exist only underground. 167 How individual states allow for civil society organizations, therefore, significantly influences the space for civil society action around UN human rights treaties.
As a consequence, each of the GCC states received formal recommendations asking for liberalization or removal of legislative restrictions on NGOs. Bahrain has had at least four such recommendations from four different sources 168 but, notwithstanding this, passed a 2013 draft law on civil society organizations seeking to further control and restrict civil society in Bahrain. The ICCPR asked Kuwait to create a new, and more independent, NHRI due to the existing Human Rights Commission being part of the Ministry of the Interior. 169 This request has been repeated on eight separate occasions. 170 Oman was asked to revise its registration procedures for NGOs during the 2010 UPR round (leading to a commitment to consider amending its Law on National Associations). 171 In November 2001, the Committee on the Rights of the Child asked Qatar to ensure that its NGO regulation conformed with international standards on freedom of association. 172 Saudi Arabia was asked to permit domestic NGO formation in the area of human rights, which it has now allowed since 2003, and to allow access for external INGOs. 173 UAE has been asked to repeal laws limiting the freedom of expression of NGOs and to bring NGO law into line with international best practice. 174 Interviews with members of civil society further highlight that there are challenges to getting registered as an NGO, and also challenges to switching from a "charitable effort" NGO to a "rights advocacy and campaigning" NGO. 175 In other words, while those who wish to advocate for human rights face legal restrictions, those organizations that already have some presence, such as women's or lawyers' associations, but do not maintain an active interest in UN human rights treaties do not have the same restrictions.
In spite of these legal restrictions, a small number of NGOs have still managed to participate and engage with the UN. In Figure 10, participation through the proxy measure of shadow reporting to the UPR procedure is assessed. This shows that the vast majority of reports are either international in origin (83 percent) or partly international in production (a further 7 percent) with only 10 percent originating locally. In terms of interstate differences, Qatar has had no local reporting in its first UPR round, Saudi Arabia only had local reporting within joint submissions in its first round, and UAE, despite having had one local report in 2009, had none in 2012.  Looking across the full scope of domestic effects, elite preference is a critical precursor to meaningful domestic reform and other channels, such as public opinion, civil society pressure or international advocacy, which are either restricted in their impact or restricted in their scope. The potential for judicial elaboration or application of UN rights norms are hampered by low awareness of, or ambiguity surrounding, the roles of treaties within domestic constitutional and legal orders. The main and small success stories result from overlaps between cautious leadership preferences with reform recommendations, combined with bilateral pressure, in the form of the United States involvement in antitrafficking.

v. CoNCLUDING THoUGHTS
This Article responds to the fact that GCC member states have been part of an important trend toward ratification of UN human rights treaties, a trend that had never before been studied closely. The study has shown that there are variations in the GCC region with regard to decisions to enter into UN human rights treaties and the extent of the subsequent secondary and primary domestic effects of human rights treaty ratification.
The trend for increased ratifications of UN human rights treaties, in particular, the recent (and quick) GCC-wide ratification of the CRPD, show that the GCC states consider UN human rights treaty ratification an important aspect of integrating into the international system and view remaining outside of the human rights system as costly for their standing in the international community. As the GCC countries are resource-wealthy states with no dependency on international financial support or aid this finding is significant. Granted, treaty ratification is selective both with regard to the treaties ratified and with regard to reservations entered at the time of ratification. The trend, however, is towards increased ratification of UN human rights treaties with fewer reservations.
Our findings confirm that the UN human rights treaties do not have extensive effects on institutions, legislative changes, and judicial decisions in the GCC region post ratification. The ongoing state building and modernization reforms in the GCC are often cautious and ambivalent toward human rights reform recommendations put forward by UN treaty bodies. Small gains in human rights reform have thus been in areas where there is overlap between leadership preferences and UN treaty body recommendations-often driven by human rights bureaucrats with a concern for the rules, bilateral pressures, or pressures from prominent domestic actors. Factors impeding human rights reforms, such as: legal and constitutional frameworks, political economy concerns, and strong conservative societal pressures, however, are more prevalent than factors facilitating them in a diverse range of human rights areas. Due to their wealth, GCC states are also not too responsive to international pressures for domestic change. Domestic effects, thus, come in small steps. They largely depend on persistent human rights champions in governmental ministries and national human rights institutions. In the GCC region, advocates and researchers of human rights would benefit from studying which issue areas are more likely to allow for small gains. In particular, small gains may prove to be an effective strategy for the institutionalization of UN human rights treaties in the long run.
Despite these limited primary effects, our study finds that the GCC states are more open to responding to UN recommendations through further ratification of UN human rights treaties and by way of creating human rights national institutions and human rights bureaucracies. While such institutions attract skepticism from human rights activists as window dressing, and lacking the adequate means and powers to be the voice of human rights law in the GCC, they also enable human rights law to penetrate into the meeting room of state authorities. Whether this new generation of GCC human rights bureaucrats will pave the way for further human rights reform, as envisaged by UN human rights treaties, remains to be seen.