The Future of Human Rights in the Americas: Update on the Inter-American Reform Process

Today, on Human Rights Day, as we mark the 64th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the inter-American human rights system – guardian of the world’s first international human rights agreement – faces an unprecedented threat to its independence and authority.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights – which oversees implementation of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, adopted in April, 1948, eight months prior to the Universal Declaration – is undergoing a state-initiated “reform” process that may lead to controversial changes in the Commission's practices and procedures, without the consent of the Commission.
As IntLawGrrl Alexandra Harrington posted in February, since it came into existence in 1960, the Inter-American Commission has promoted and protected human rights in the 35 member states of the Organization of American States. It does so through reporting, country visits, precautionary measures, and the individual complaints mechanism. The Commission's exercise of its functions has motivated criticism and objections in recent years from some states that disagreed with specific decisions – as have Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, and Peru – or accused it of bias – as has Venezuela.
In June of 2011, the OAS Permanent Council created a Special Working Group with a mandate to study the Commission’s work and propose any reforms deemed necessary. The Special Working Group’s proposals, which the OAS Permanent Council approved this past January, focused on both the Commission’s institutional practices and its substantive mandate.
Among the most controversial proposed reforms were those that would:
► Restrict the Commission’s discretion in deciding requests for precautionary measures,
► Significantly alter Chapter IV of the Commission’s Annual Report, in which it highlights countries with particularly troublesome human rights practices,
► Reduce the autonomy of the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, and
► Impose additional restrictions on the processing of individual complaints in ways that could favor states at the expense of victims.
Civil society has criticized the proposed reforms, and the reform process itself, as lacking in transparency and input from advocates and victims.
A joint statement coordinated by CEJIL, the Center for Justice and International Law, and signed by over 90 organizations, called on the OAS and its individual member states to ensure that the process is truly aimed at strengthening the inter-American system and includes the input of advocates and victims. Representatives of nongovernmental organizations, academia, and the judiciary have also signed on to the “Bogota Declaration,” which echoes this call.
A politically motivated, state-imposed reform of the Commission’s authority and procedures is a unique and pressing cause for concern to all those invested in the protection of human rights in the Americas.
In the words of the Commission's chair, José de Jesús Orozco:

International law as a tool to promote human rights

(On Human Rights Day 2011, we present Part 2 of a 2-part series on human rights advocacy by guest blogger Lisa Reinsberg; Part 1 is here)

Despite the significance of international law for human rights – discussed in my post yesterday – international law remains at a distance from many who work in and struggle for human rights. (credit for Human Rights Day 2011 logo)
Few victims, social justice advocates, and attorneys around the world are aware of the relevance of international law to the issues they confront. Even fewer are equipped with the knowledge and support necessary to use international law and mechanisms to protect human rights effectively, on either an individual or a societal level.
Determined persons can access a variety of academic resources. Yet such resources generally are known only by, and useful only to, the small group of attorneys routinely engaged in international advocacy. For most other persons, international law remains opaque and difficult to utilize.
Further, the ability of existing nongovernmental organizations to meet the needs of inexperienced international human rights advocates is limited in one or more important aspects -- for example, by geography or theme, or by scarce resources. The lack of transparency generally surrounding the work of human rights mechanisms’ is also a consequence of the limited resources of those bodies for press, public education, and outreach.
The outcomes of utilizing international human rights mechanisms vary, not only as a function of the differing mandates of the individual bodies, but also as a product both of the broader political and social context and of the expertise and strategies employed by victims and victims' representatives.
Indeed, in supranational human rights tribunals like those mentioned in yesterday's post, rejection rates remain high.
Lacking the resources to investigate each claim, human rights tribunals must rely on the facts and arguments provided by the parties. Often that is not ideal. A petitioner may complain of the thing that most affronted his sense of dignity or hurt his pocketbook, while neglecting to mention the injustices that seem to him routine or unlikely to interest an international body.
For example, while serving as legal fellow at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, I once came across a petition in which a group of individuals complained of the temporary confiscation of their personal items by police. It was only through additional research and correspondence that I learned the confiscation occurred in the context of a large-scale eviction, displacement, and harassment of the indigenous community to which the individuals belonged.
In the absence of broader awareness or interest, immediate and full compliance with human rights mechanisms’ recommendations or judgments still proves largely illusory. States are thought to be more likely to comply with monetary reparations than with more fundamentally protective or transformative reparations, such as legislative change. Similarly, international bodies are chronically underfunded, in spite of being responsible for ever-growing caseloads. This problem has led to repeated calls for funding reform, including this call for funding, posted a few weeks ago by James A. Goldston, Executive Director of the Open Society Justice Initiative.
Notwithstanding these challenges, international human rights bodies can have enormous impact at both the individual and societal levels. Examples include:
► An instance in which human rights intervention allowed an immigrant to stay with his family;
► An issue on which IntLawGrrls frequently have posted, the enabling of the prosecution of high-level officials through the repeal of amnesty laws that had immunized past international crimes (as in Peru and Uruguay); and
► Supranational bodies’ significant, broadly-accepted and progressive expansion of what we now consider human rights protected by law.
Even partial successes must be judged against the alternative; after all, it is only once domestic remedies prove unfruitful that victims may turn to supranational venues for individual redress. For a victim of a human rights violation, the opportunity to have her story recorded, a past injustice acknowledged, and the state’s accountability finally determined is meaningful, and more than she would otherwise have. That is even more the case with respect to a public apology from the state, such as those extended just in the last month: two by Mexico (here and here), one by Britain, and one by Guatemala.
A woman I once interviewed, who has not seen her husband since he was abducted by government agents over a decade ago, explained the difference between her hearing before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and her previous dealings with the state. Referring to government officials as "they," she said of the judicial forum:
'There they listen.…now it is they who have to give answers.'
Helping victims obtain not only answers, but also justice, by democratizing access to international norms and mechanisms, is the aim of the International Justice Resource Center, founded earlier this year.

Guest Blogger: Lisa Reinsberg

We're very pleased to welcome Lisa Reinsberg (née Cowan, at left) as today's guest blogger.
Lisa is the founder and Executive Director of the Boston-based International Justice Resource Center (an organization on whose advisory board I am proud to sit). Lisa discusses the work and mission of the new Center, in the context of the needs of the human rights movement, in a 2-part series that begins with Part 1, her guest post below. (Part 2 is here.)
Lisa has diverse experience dealing with human rights cases, at the state, federal, and regional levels. Most recently, she was a legal fellow at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Previously, she had carried out a research project, funded by the Fulbright Program, on the use of international human rights litigation by Latin American nongovernmental organizations.
Lisa earned a B.A. degree in political science and communications from the University of California-San Diego and a J.D. degree from Georgetown University Law Center.

Lisa dedicates her post to Blanca Jeanette Kawas Fernández (left), a Honduran environmental activist who was killed in 1995, in the context of attacks against environmentalists seeking to defend Honduras’ natural resources against corporate development. (image credit) Her survivors submitted to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights a petition against the state of Honduras. Lisa writes:

In 2008, I was with Jeanette's family when they testified before the Inter-American Court, which in 2009 found Honduras responsible for violations of the rights to life, freedom of association, due process and judicial protection in connection with her death.

Today Kawas Fernández joins other IntLawGrrls foremothers in the list below our "visiting from..." map at right.
Heartfelt welcome to both Lisa and the IJRC!

Why every human rights advocate should know a little international law

(Thank you to IntLawGrrls, and in particular to Beth Van Schaack, for the opportunity to contribute this guest post, Part 1 of a 2-part series on effective human rights advocacy; Part 2 is here)

International law is a powerful tool for the protection of human rights. The law and the bodies that enforce it can provide real redress for victims of human rights abuses, build bridges between communities facing similar harms, bolster arguments for accountability, and mandate reforms. Though the regional and thematic treaty-based nature of human rights mechanisms may lead to some fragmentation or inconsistencies in the development of substantive rights, individuals and nongovernmental organizations’ thoughtful engagement with such mechanisms can yield profound results; for example:
► Vindication for the individual, as in this judgment from the European Court of Human Rights;
► A new beginning for the individual's community, as in this case from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights; and
► Landmark policy change for the individual's country, as in this matter before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
In January of this year, I founded the International Justice Resource Center, a nongovernmental organization aimed at furthering such achievements -- in particular, helping human rights advocates know more about, and thus make better use of, international law.
IJRC is a global, user-oriented platform aimed at connecting grassroots human rights advocates with an underutilized, but powerful set of tools: international law and supranational human rights mechanisms. IJRC administers an online hub, tailored trainings and advocacy support, with the goal of democratizing understanding of and access to the range of international human rights norms and the bodies charged with their promotion and protection.
Based in Boston, Massachusetts, IJRC already has trained advocates working in various regions of the world, and responded to requests for advice from California to Kyrgyzstan. IJRC is also building an online platform where visitors can seek assistance, engage with one another, and access practical, user-friendly resources, such as instructional videos and manuals. No matter the issue they are facing or the country in which they work, advocates will be able to gain actionable knowledge of the standards and bodies relevant to their litigation, reporting, advocacy, or public education campaigns.
This past Wednesday, IJRC hosted Boston Human Rights Night, which brought together members of the academic, social justice, and legal communities to learn about one another’s work and explore the opportunities that international law presents for enhanced human rights promotion. The evening was also the culminating celebration of Campaign 501, which wraps up tomorrow.
At the Human Rights Night, an expert panel provided concrete examples from their work in the United States and abroad, allowing participants to take away a fuller understanding of the relevance of international law to social justice advocacy in the United States.
As panelists detailed, persons seeking improvement of – or accountability for – human rights conditions in the United States can:
► Prepare shadow reports for the expert bodies monitoring compliance with the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment;
► Engage with the Human Rights Council thematic special procedures’ factfinding and reporting activities or seek the body's intervention on specific human rights violations;
► Submit information for consideration by the U.N. Human Rights Council as part of its Universal Periodic Review process;
► Make specific allegations of human rights violations through the Human Rights Council complaints procedure; and
► Submit individual complaints to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and furthermore, participate in that body’s thematic hearings and rapporteurs’ activities.
In addition, many international bodies are empowered to intervene and urge or order state action where the life or security of a person or the object of the litigation is at immediate risk of irreparable harm. These means of engagement do not include still another avenue: advocacy around and engagement with the work of the political organs of intergovernmental organizations.
Unfotunately, as I will discuss in Part 2, the post that will appear tomorrow, Human Rights Day 2011, there remains a gap between the availability and use of such international law resources.