This Article addresses the development of obligations erga omnes partes and their legal status, and clarifies the extent to which the notion has had an impact on the enforcement of multilateral treaties and, in particular, human rights conventions by examining international and regional case law, soft law instruments, and state practice. It argues that the endorsement of the concept by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has the potential to dramatically expand its application to breaches of all kinds of multilateral treaties where such breaches amount to violations of obligations pertaining to a treaty’s object and purpose. In this sense, a violation of an obligation erga omnes partes is conceptually identical to a “material breach” envisaged under Article 60(2) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, but the development of the relevant rules gives the claimant state an additional procedural remedy to institute proceedings against the violating state to end the breach.

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