Why United Nations Gender Justice Mechanisms Fail: Structural and Supervisory Limits in International Law

Abstract

This article explains why United Nations gender justice mechanisms fail to secure enforceable remedies despite a dense normative architecture. It argues that the difficulty is structural. First, the consent-based foundation of treaty law and varied domestic incorporation dilute uniform legal force. Second, institutional fragmentation disperses mandates and creates overlapping supervisory registers that complicate doctrinal clarity. Third, supervisory modalities are typically dialogic and hortatory; they generate epistemic authority but rarely determine findings that translate into state responsibility or reparative measures. The article shows how these limits combine to make supervision often illuminating yet remedial of last resort. It then proposes mitigations: harmonise follow-up across treaty bodies, promote universal accession to optional protocols, formalise secretariat-level coordination, sharpen the interpretive force of general recommendations and prioritise domestic uptake through capacity building for legal actors. The conclusion insists that legal form matters as much as normative content for securing gender justice.

Dhaka University Law Journal, 2026, 37 (1), 25-50