The Domestic Institutionalisation Of Human Rights

This book explores recent developments pointing towards a ‘domestic institutionalisation of human rights’, composed of converging international trends prescribing the setting up of domestic institutions, and the need for a national human rights systems approach. Building on new compliance theories, innovative arrangements have resolutely appeared around the turn of the millennium and some are now legally enshrined in human rights treaties. In their introduction, the editors capture these developments, their main elements and key points of debate. They outline a research agenda aimed at structuring and generating further attention from both academics and practitioners. As a stepping stone, the book singles out the purposeful attempt by the United Nations and others to frame these trends around the concept of ‘National Human Rights System’. The chapters assess various models and cases put forward for such systems. Each chapter highlights the specific forms of institutions being promoted and their intended domestic interactions, and discusses how these institutions are leveraged and strengthened by international bodies. Authors critically review their implications for the future of human rights, paving the way for additional research. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Nordic Journal of Human Rights.

By giving numerous examples of practical approaches, this publication shows that there are various ways for donor agencies to take human rights more systematically into account – in accordance with their respective mandates, modes of engagement and comparative advantage.

In recent years, human rights have come under fire, with the rise of political illiberalism and the coming to power of populist authoritarian leaders in many parts of the world who contest and dismiss the idea of human rights. More surprisingly, scholars and public intellectuals, from both the progressive and the conservative side of the political spectrum, have also been deeply critical, dismissing human rights as flawed, inadequate, hegemonic, or overreaching. While acknowledging some of the shortcomings, this book presents an experimentalist account of international human rights law and practice and argues that the human rights movement remains a powerful and appealing one with widespread traction in many parts of the globe. Using three case studies to illuminate the importance and vibrancy of the movement around the world, the book argues that its potency and legitimacy rest on three main pillars: First, it is based on a deeply-rooted and widely appealing moral discourse that integrates the three universal values of human dignity, human welfare, and human freedom. Second, these values and their elaboration in international legal instruments have gained widespread - even if thin - agreement among states worldwide. Third, human rights law and practice is highly dynamic, with human rights being activated, shaped, and given meaning and impact through the on-going mobilization of affected individuals and groups, and through their iterative engagement with multiple domestic and international institutions and processes. The book offers an account of how the human rights movement has helped to promote human rights and positive social change, and argues that the challenges of the current era provide good reasons to reform, innovate, and strengthen that movement, rather than to abandon it or to herald its demise.

The human rights movement strives to develop a universal culture of human rights in all societies, as well as to confront gross violations. This book, the first ever of its kind, is a veritable State of the World Report on Human Rights. It reproduces summaries by UN High Commissioners for Human Rights on the state of the national human rights protection systems of each UN Member State. These summaries were sent following each state’s passage through the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process of the UN Human Rights Council. The summaries identify each state’s constitutional, legal, judicial and institutional architecture, international conventions not yet ratified, areas of progress, problem areas, and problems affecting different parts of the population. The High Commissioners’ summaries reproduced here are preceded by insightful reflections on the concept of a national human rights protection system, and by regional outlines of national human rights protection systems in the Americas and the Caribbean, Europe Africa, Asia and the Pacific. The book also contains some case studies of the national human rights protection systems of sample states such as Australia, Bhutan, Brazil, Canada, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guyana, Portugal, Switzerland, Sweden, and South Africa.

This collection of chapters tracks and explains the impact of the nine core United Nations human rights treaties in 20 selected countries, four from each of the five UN regions. Researchers based in each of these countries were responsible for the chapters, in which they assess the influence of the treaties and treaty body recommendations on legislation, policies, court decisions and practices. By covering the 20 years between July 1999 and June 2019, this book updates a study done 20 years ago.

Building upon the growing body of scholarship on the factors and actors that influence the extent to which states implement human rights law, this cutting-edge Research Handbook takes an interdisciplinary approach to exploring the roles of actors within supranational human rights bodies, the decisions and judgements they make, and the tools they use to facilitate human rights implementation.

This book addresses the technicalities of how international human rights law can be applied at the domestic level through a case study of the human rights methodology of the Indonesian judiciary. Numerous international human rights treaties have been ratified by States parties all around the world. However, local implementation has proven a difficult task for national authorities with every State struggling to realize rights to varying degrees. This reveals a gap between the standards of human rights as envisaged by the law and those experienced by rights holders at the local level. This work analyses how Indonesian courts interpret and apply human rights. It discusses the position of human rights within specific areas of Indonesian law: constitutional law, criminal law and private law. It analyses how courts have dealt with specific cases within these fields of law. Its key contribution lies in its detailed attention to the role of the Indonesian judiciary in implementing human rights, as well as to the influence of international law, and the role that actors other than the judiciary play in this process. It also incorporates international comparative perspectives. The book will be of particular interest to human rights scholars concerned with national judiciaries’ role in human rights implementation, and to scholars, judges, civil society actors and legal practitioners working with law and human rights in Indonesia.

International human rights law is undoubtedly intertwined with politics, and so this Research Handbook explores and provokes reflection on how politics impacts human rights legislation and, conversely, how human rights law shapes politics and the functioning of the state. Bringing together leading international scholars in human rights law and politics, the Research Handbook provides theoretical reflections and empirical analyses across the areas of governance and policies and examines the implementation mechanisms of human rights law in national and international jurisdictions.