Treaties and individuals: of beneficiaries, duty-bearers, users, and participants

This contribution explores the role of individuals in the law of treaties. Individuals besides being beneficiaries or duty bearers under treaty regimes (something evident in human rights treaties and international criminal law treaties) have slowly started to play other roles as well. In some instances they can be seen as users of the law of treaties. They are also emerging, in a rather narrow setting for the time being, as participants. The chapter, after positioning the individual in the international legal system using the concept of capacity, analyses the various roles of the individual under the aforementioned categorization.