The number of international human rights treaties and monitoring mechanisms has grown considerably over the past decades. States are increasingly confronted with criticism as to their domestic human rights record. What is the effect of all these treaties, as well as the monitoring and criticism? Do they lead to changes and improvements? This book addresses such questions. It investigates the domestic impact and effectiveness of the process of State reporting under the six main UN human rights treaties in the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Finland. The focus is on the effectiveness of the recommendations of the treaty bodies and the extent to which policy or legislation is changed as a result of these recommendations. The book provides insights into the factors at both the national and international level which contribute to the effectiveness of the treaty bodies' recommendations. It is thorough in its approach, because it is based on an extensive analysis of a wide variety of documents, as well as 175 interviews with various domestic human rights stakeholders in the three countries. This includes government officials, NGO representatives, members of parliament, lawyers, judges, academics, and representatives from human rights and Ombudsman institutions. The book discusses a large number of concrete examples of effective recommendations of the treaty bodies to illustrate the major conclusions. (Series: School of Human Rights Research - Vol. 63)
About the Author: Jasper Krommendijk holds an LLM degree in International Law and the Law of International Organisations from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. He previously completed bachelor degrees in International Relations and International and European Law (cum laude) at the same university. During his studies, Jasper worked as a research assistant on international investment law and did an internship at the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, working on issues relating to the implementation of the EU Services Directive. Afterwards he worked at the Ministry of Justice in the field of EU criminal law and on the development of an additional 'rule of law' evaluation mechanism to strengthen mutual trust between EU member states.

He started as a PhD researcher at the Maastricht Centre for Human Rights in November 2009. For the purpose of his research, Jasper was a visiting researcher at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand and the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights, Helsinki, Finland. He was also a research fellow at the MultiRights Summer Institute 2013 at the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights in Oslo, Norway. During his appointment, he taught various courses at the Faculty of Law, University College and the China-EU School of Law in the fields of international and European law, human rights law and International Relations. In addition to his research and teaching, Jasper was also a member in the Board of the Maastricht Centre for Human Rights, the Chair of the PhD Council and, as such, active in the Board and Graduate Programme Committee of the School of Human Rights Research. In addition, Jasper was a member of the Dutch National Human Rights Institute's sounding group for the annual report about the human rights situation in the Netherlands (Klankbordgroep Jaarlijkse Rapportage).

In July 2014, Jasper began as an Assistant Professor of European Law at Radboud University Nijmegen, where he conducts research on (the domestic impact of) the evolving EU human rights architecture, including the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and judgments of the Court of Justice of the European Union in the field of human rights.