This chapter is, together with the next, a necessary predecessor of chapter IV, which inter alia will describe the added value of dialogue for the Convention system. Clearly, to come to such a description, it is first required that the characteristics of the Convention system itself are introduced. The characterisation in this chapter is made from four angles: the system's establishment, its functioning, the developments it has gone through and past and current reform to the system. To ensure the relevance of this chapter to the central theme of this study – Convention dialogue, the chapter focuses mainly on how the system's establishment, functioning, development and reform have determined and influenced the relation and the distribution of power and responsibilities between the interlocutors taking part in that dialogue.

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CONVENTION SYSTEM

Unity and Human Rights

The establishment of the Convention system can be understood in the light of the development of two ideals that preceded the First and Second World War and that came to bloom directly thereafter: European unity and human rights. The ideal of European unity through either voluntary or forced means can be traced back as far as Charlemagne, Napoleon and Kant; that of human rights as far back as the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man. Moreover, the ideals of cooperation, peace and security played a role during the Interbellum when the states parties to the League of Nations agreed to the Covenant of the League ‘in order to promote international co-operation and to secure international peace and security’. The ideals of unity and human rights transcended Europe and appealed universally after the end of the Second World War. In June 1945, the UN was established. Its Charter clearly echoes the two ideals. The UN is to be a ‘centre for harmonizing the actions of all nations’, aiming to take collective measures to attain the common ends of maintaining international peace and security, to develop friendly relations among nations and to achieve international co-operation in solving international problems. The UN Charter also refers to human rights at different occasions. Most importantly, one of the UN's purposes is to ‘achieve international co-operation […] in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms’.