Interim Measures in the UN Human Rights Committee

International human rights bodies with responsibility for monitoring the implementation and enforcement of rights protected by human rights treaties are usually empowered to indicate interim, or provisional, measures of protection in cases of urgency in order to safeguard the rights and persons of victims of alleged violations of human rights.1 Whether State parties are obliged to comply with a request for interim measures of protection has been the subject of some debate. The purpose of this note is to examine the issue of the binding force of interim measures of protection in the United Nations human rights system in light of the views of the Human Rights Committee (hereafter the Committee) in Piandiong, Morailos and Bulan v The Philippines.2 Before doing so, however, we need to recall briefly the Committee's role in securing the rights of the individual.