History and Action: The Inter-American Human Rights System and the Role of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (original) (raw)
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This article examines the historical origins of the Inter-American human rights system and key achievements of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights over the past fifty years. It explores the Commission's use of on sight visits and country reports to expose human rights violations of military governments during the 1970s and its increased use of the case system since the restoration of democratic rule in the 1990s. The article also notes how shifts in US foreign policy toward the region impacted the Commission's work. It concludes by noting certain obstacles and challenges currently faced by the Commission.
International Law and the Protection of Human Rights in the Inter-American System
Houston Journal of International Law, 1997
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States. Affiliation for identification purposes only. The opinions expressed are those of the author alone and are not to be attributed to the Organization of American States or any of its organs. 1. U.N. CHARTER art. 2, para. 1. 2. See id. arts. 3-4. 3. See ARTHUR LARSON ET AL., SOVEREIGNTY WITHIN THE LAW 125 (1965). 4. See WERNER LEVI, CONTEMPORARY INTERNATIONAL LAW: A CONCISE INTRODUCTION 73 (2d ed. 1991).
Beijing Law Review
The Inter-American human rights system is one of the major regional human rights systems globally. In spite of the availability of human rights instruments in the region, some of which are legally binding, the spate of human rights abuse still leaves a sad commentary. The objective of this paper therefore is to take a critical survey of the human rights instruments in the region with a view to assessing their strengths and constraints. The method of research is basically doctrinal and utilizes the major human rights instruments in the region such as the Charter of the Organization of American States (OAS), the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of man, and the American Convention on Human Rights in its evaluation. It is the finding of the paper that the Inter-American system indeed has a number of positive features such as the emphasis placed on democratic governance and third party interventions in the adjudicatory process among others. The paper has also identified a number of weaknesses in the system including that the Inter-American Commission lacks the power to refer a case to the Inter-American Court where the State concerned has not ratified the American Convention on Human Rights; and further, the Commission's recommendations are not legally binding. Therefore, the paper recommended among other things that the Commission be able to transmit a case directly to the Court whether or not the party concerned has ratified the American Convention.
The American Convention on Human Rights, Updated by the Inter-American Court
Juris Dictio, 2017
This work attempts to provide an instrument allowing non-specialized readers to become acquainted with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights case law. In order to do so, it inserts the Inter-American Court’s case law into the American Convention on Human Rights. The author makes this insertion using the prescriptive and concise format of international treaties, so that the result of this work is neither a manual nor a casebook, but a document that is brief and easy to consult.
Rethinking the Impact of the Inter-American Human Rights System
This chapter introduces a forthcoming book ('The Inter-American Human Rights System: Impact Beyond Compliance') and is divided into three parts. The first part identifies key gaps in existing human rights scholarship, particularly in relation to the IAHRS, and makes the case for the need to go beyond conventional compliance models of international human rights. The second part outlines three core perspectives on the System’s impact on human rights and it offers a synthesis of the key findings of the volume. Building on these insights, the final part provides reflections on the future prospects of the System by locating it in its broader global context.
The Inter-American Human Rights System: Notable Achievements and Enduring Challenges
In the teaching, as well as in the historiography, of international human rights, regional human rights systems, with the partial exception of the European Court of Human Rights, remain marginalised. This is regrettable for a number of reasons; not least because the richness of regional experiences with human rights offers us a more nuanced understanding of the enduring attraction of human rights around the world (as well as a better sense of the diversity and contentious political struggles that characterise them), than that prevailing in the current literature proclaiming the endtimes of human rights (Hopgood 2013; Moyn 2012). Nowhere can this be seen better than in the region of the Americas, where the Inter-American Human Rights System (IAHRS) emerged to play a vanguard role in the development of the modern international human rights regime. This short piece briefly reviews the current state of the IAHRS, and highlights its key achievements, as well as some of the many challenges it faces. It should be pointed out, from the outset, that any list of achievements and challenges inevitably depends on perspective, the specific yardstick adopted, and, in particular, the understanding of what could be reasonably expected from the IAHRS.