NHRIs as Autonomous Human Rights Treaty Actors

Abstract

What roles do National Human Rights Institutions (‘nhri s’) play in UN human rights treaties, and what is the normative basis of such roles? Although NHRIs are formally State organs, UN human rights treaty bodies have increasingly permitted them to participate in their procedures not as part of the State but in their own capacity as NHRIs. UN human rights treaty bodies have referred to the information and views submitted by nhri s even when such submissions did not conform to the positions taken by their States. In this sense, NHRIs are increasingly acquiring an autonomous status that is distinct from that of States under UN human rights treaties. Through a comprehensive and up- to- date examination of the practices of treaty bodies and the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions and by employing the theoretical lens of ‘global legal pluralism’, this article shows that the autonomous status of NHRIs has a solid normative basis. It is the product of the cooperative relationship between UN human rights treaties and the ‘Paris Principles’, an autonomous legal order of, by, and for nhri s, under the overarching values and principles of human rights protection, democracy, and subsidiarity.