Derogation of Human Rights: The Case of Article Four – ICCPR and Its Application in Qatar

As of this writing, there are 172 countries around the world that have ratified and acceded to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The ICCPR, a multilateral treaty that obliges State parties to respect the civil rights, has been ratified in Qatar since 2018. This signals Qatar’s commitment to implement the obligations outlined in the treaty, with some reservations. One of the reservations that this paper is very interested in is the provisions outlined in Article 4, which allows the party States to take measures to temporarily derogate some of their obligations towards the ICCPR in times of public emergency. This paper studies the extent by which party States can derogate from the ICCPR treaty with strong focus on the measures that party States must take to make their derogation from the obligations legally acceptable. A specific case that this paper is interested is the CoViD-19 situation where Qatar as well as the rest of the world had to exercise their rights to derogate their obligations outlined in the ICCPR treaty. In effect, this paper differentiates between legally acceptable derogation from the treaty and the reservations by the states.