Inter-American System Of Human Rights Research Articles

Compliance Agreements: Emergent Flexibility in the Inter-American Human Rights System

Abstract Are agreements between states and victims an effective way to achieve reparations for human rights violations? We identify and evaluate a legal instrument hitherto ignored in analyses of the Inter-American Human Rights System: compliance agreements. These agreements emerged as a tool to negotiate the implementation of recommendations made by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to states responsible for human rights violations. In the first part of the paper, we theorize the role of agreements in securing state compliance, and discuss the problem of self-selection in legal settlements. We then document the emergence of this legal instrument and its novel role in the Inter-American System. In the third part, we provide statistical evidence from event history, matching, difference-in-differences, and sensitivity analyses showing that agreements increase the probability of compliance and cut the expected time to compliance by more than half. Agreements thus contribute to a potential solution for the perceived crisis of compliance in the Inter-American Human Rights System. However, the Commission must offer greater transparency to facilitate the evaluation of this mechanism.

The Political Ecology of Climate Remedies in Latin America and the Caribbean: Comparing Compliance between National and Inter-American Litigation

Abstract The climate crisis will continue to affect human and natural systems across Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Undoubtedly, this jeopardizes entire communities’ enjoyment of human rights. In that context, the Inter-American Human Rights System (IAHRS) is expected to respond, particularly since its organs have jurisdiction to order remedies over most LAC countries, provided they determine a rights violation. Despite the growing number of domestic human rights-based climate cases in the region, the organs of the IAHRS have yet to adjudicate and order remedies in a case concerning the climate crisis. Against this backdrop, this article inquires how to understand climate remedies from a political ecology perspective to capture the LAC climate litigation experience. Additionally, the article asks what the challenges of implementing such remedies may be. To answer these questions, first, it compares the remedial approaches of domestic courts in six finally decided climate-related cases with those of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) in ‘anti-extractivist’ cases. Second, it applies a political ecology lens to understand the elements that might hinder the implementation of the identified remedies. The article argues that the socioeconomic cost for States largely determines remedial compliance in domestic climate litigation and the IACtHR’s anti-extractivist litigation. Ultimately, the aim is to anticipate the future of climate remedies and their effectiveness at the IACtHR based on present climate litigation in LAC.

Confronting Extractivism: The Inter-American Human Rights System and Indigenous Rights in Latin America

Confronting Extractivism: The Inter-American Human Rights System and Indigenous Rights in Latin America

Amnesty Laws in Inter-American Human Rights System and Transitional Justice in Brazilian and Argentine States

Resumo Durante o período da guerra fria, os Estados Latino-Americanos, diante da suposta ameaça comunista, viveram sob governos ditatoriais e violência estatal. O Brasil, em 1979, aprovou a Lei de Anistia Política, a qual concedeu anistia ampla tanto aos perpetradores de violência pelo Estado, quanto aos dissidentes do regime. Essa lei continua vigente, sem revisões, em razão do julgamento de uma Arguição de Preceito Fundamental pelo Supremo Tribunal Federal, apesar de posicionamentos contrários do Sistema Interamericano de Direitos Humanos. A Argentina, por sua vez, apesar de ter aprovado, em 1986, a denominada Lei de Ponto Final, que determinava a paralisação do trâmite de ações judiciais que buscavam a condenação dos perpetradores de violência estatal durante a ditadura, reviu o seu posicionamento por meio de um diálogo com a Comissão Internacional de Direitos Humanos. Com a utilização do método comparativo das condições históricas de aprovação e de conteúdo de forma geral, das leis de anistia brasileira e argentina, além da comparação das manifestações do Sistema Interamericano acerca dessas leis, o presente estudo busca mostrar as similaridades e discrepâncias na forma de tratamento interno pelas Cortes Constitucionais Argentina e Brasileira, das declarações do Sistema Interamericano sobre suas leis de anistia, além de avaliar o aspecto da condenação dos responsáveis pelas violências estatais nos dois países, parte indispensável de uma justiça de transição com o uso também do método hipotético-dedutivo e de pesquisa bibliográfica e documental. Por fim, a presente pesquisa explicita a falta de uma boa justiça de transição no Brasil, alicerçada na lei de anistia elaborada ainda durante a ditadura militar, nas condenações do Brasil perante a Corte Interamericana de Direitos Humanos e na confirmação da constitucionalidade da mencionada lei pela Corte Constitucional brasileira, de forma comparada com a forma que a Argentina conduziu a sua justiça de transição, com ruptura e penalização daqueles que perpetraram violências e violações de direitos humanos durante a ditadura, possibilitando a efetividade do direito à verdade e a possibilidade de construção da memória da população.

Emergencies in the Inter-American Human Rights System: the Example of Ecuador in Times of COVID-19

Emergencies in the Inter-American Human Rights System: the Example of Ecuador in Times of COVID-19

The right to strike in the Inter-American System of Human Rights

The right to strike in the Inter-American System of Human Rights

The Complementarity Paradigm: Tracing the Transitional Justice Blueprint in the Inter-American System of Human Rights

ABSTRACT∞ The promotion of ‘home-grown’ approaches to transitional justice is a powerful trope animating the field, encouraging local ownership of transitional justice processes, and refusing ‘one size fits all’ formulas. I challenge this account by exploring how the obligations resulting from anti-impunity’s advent yield only one particular institutional design that seems compatible with obligations under the American Convention on Human Rights. This means that the state’s autonomy to institutionally design a transition is increasingly narrowed in the Inter-American System of Human Rights. I develop this argument by exploring how the right to truth is enforced, showing that the interaction between regional obligations and truth as a right yields a specific transitional institutional blueprint. In doing so, I unpack legal techniques that assist in framing as necessary a transitional justice model that is a contingent, and reckon with its implications.

THE YANOMAMI IN BRAZIL

This study evaluates the legal implications of the traditional occupation of land by the Yanomami people in Brazil, beginning from the construction of the highway BR-210 (Rodovia Perimetral Norte) in 1973, which corresponded to a large influx of non-indigenous people and several land conflicts. We seek to show—by analyzing the Brazilian Constitutions after 1967, the infraconstitutional law upheld by the constitution, the international treaties, and the inter-American jurisprudence—that the legal order in Brazil provides for the possession of indigenous lands, the usufruct of their natural resources, land demarcation, and the removal of intruders. However, the State systematically violates these rights, occasionally causing humanitarian crises. This serious phenomenon occurred twice. During the Brazilian dictatorship (specially from 1975 to 1990) and the Brazilian democracy crisis (beginning in 2014). Both mobilized the bodies of the inter-American human rights system. Although Indigenous rights are well developed in Brazil, their effectiveness remains a challenge due to the political opposition of certain social groups, culminating in periods of greater democratic fragility, humanitarian crises analyzed by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which has jurisdiction to respond to Brazil.

Toward a Consolidated Case Law on Labour Rights in the Inter-American Human Rights System. The Case femapor and the Right to a Fair Remuneration

Toward a Consolidated Case Law on Labour Rights in the Inter-American Human Rights System. The Case femapor and the Right to a Fair Remuneration

From Structural Discrimination to Intersectionality in the Inter-American System of Human Rights: Unravelling Categorical Framings

The paper focuses on the way human rights law has been incorporating notions of intersectionality through legal instruments as well as through human rights courts’ decisions. The overall goal is to expose the shortcomings of the current conception of intersectionality as it has been applied by the Inter-American Court, which, I argue, derive from a categorical understanding of group and identity-based rights transplanted from the notion of structural discrimination. The paper argues that approaching human rights violations by means of categorical reasoning is detrimental to intersectional interests, since it perpetuates the problem that intersectionality seeks to overcome in the first place, and suggests that cutting across categories is a potentially more fruitful pathway for the future of intersectionality in the legal field.

New contributions of the Inter-American Human Rights system to the needs of private interest of migratory flows

The article addresses the study of the transformation in migratory profiles, categories in which people are placed as migrants, which due to the globalization of migratory flows have created new challenges of migratory regulation. The countries belonging to the Inter-American Human Rights System, in order to face these challenges, have developed tools that codify the application of conventional instruments to once again open the possibility of a more dynamic normative unification. The control of conventionality is one of the key points on which the analysis of the internal application of the national regulations of the countries is in harmony with the international criteria and that has undoubtedly materialized in the unified codification of the internal law of the members. , so that it is relevant for migration policy, because the migrant as a global citizen will not have a single legal framework, but rather starts from a particular territorial area, to later move beyond the traditional spheres of power, for the capacity it has to relate to other subjects of international law. Thus, the study finally moves to those tools of conventional interpretation and those created with the objective of governing the private relations of migratory flows in the territories of the members of the community.

Academic freedom: A view from the Inter-American system of human rights

Academic freedom: A view from the Inter-American system of human rights

Um caminho sempre necessário na proteção dos direitos humanos: os pronunciamentos da Corte Interamericana em casos de pena de morte e desaparecimento forçado de pessoas

This article examines substantial aspects that, with the deployment of advisory and contentious functions by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, are sculpted within the Inter-American Human Rights System. The purpose of this work is to demonstrate, through the analysis of various pronouncements that essentially concern the death penalty, the forced disappearance of persons and its reparation phase, how the Inter-American Court has been delineating increasingly precise parameters in those matters that, by compelling States to comply with their regional obligations, contribute to greater protection of human rights. For this, we will focus this study from a quantitative perspective, which will allow us, through selected cases of the Inter-American Court, to arrive on its main conclusions.

Militarization and privatization of security: From the War on Drugs to the fight against organized crime in Latin America

AbstractFifty-two years ago, in 1971, President Nixon declared the “War on Drugs”, identifying drug abuse as a public enemy in the United States. Since then, US drug policy has been militarized and, more recently, privatized. Every year, the US government increasingly contracts private military and security companies to provide intelligence, logistical support and training to armed forces in drug-producing or drug-transit States. In Latin America, this militarization and privatization has increased the intensity of violence and has complexified domestic situations, to the extent that the existing international legal regimes now seem inappropriate to respond to the challenges posed by the War on Drugs. On the one hand, human rights law does not adequately address situations where the State faces organized crime groups that are able to control territory. On the other hand, international humanitarian law (IHL) was not created to address law enforcement situations, which the War on Drugs and the fight against organized crime ostensibly are.This article examines the situation in Latin America, looking at examples of different types of situations through the lens of intensity and organization of the group involved and, in some cases, the group's control over territory. It discusses the application of IHL and human rights law (focusing on the inter-American system of human rights) in these situations and their complementarity, and debates how these bodies of law are adapting or may need to be adapted.

Abortion in International Human Rights Law: Missed Opportunities in Manuela v El Salvador

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights’ judgment in Manuela and Others v El Salvador represents a missed opportunity for advancing abortion access and sexual and reproductive health and rights in international human rights law (IHRL). Even though this case is representative of the multiple human right violations arising from El Salvador’s complete criminalisation of abortion and active prosecution of those suspected of having had the procedure, the Court shied away from engaging in a critique of El Salvador’s abortion legislation. Instead, it focused on issues relating to pre-trial detention, due process, and medical confidentiality. Despite growing consensus in IHRL that abortion must be decriminalised at a minimum in certain circumstances; indications that the inter-American human rights system subscribes to this position; and extensive evidence that El Salvador’s abortion legislation is resulting in human rights violations, the Court failed to use this judgment to articulate a clear and assertive position on the need for abortion access to realise sexual and reproductive health and rights.

The implementation of reparations in the Inter-American human rights system

Reparations as a consequence of the harm suffered by individuals is a general principle of law, recognized by States as a mechanism to compensate for the harm caused by others. In the regional systems for the protection of human rights, the courts have made important advances throughout their operation in generating progressive interpretations of the principle of reparations as a consequence of human rights violations by States. In the inter-American human rights system, the role of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has had an important evolutionary development on the interpretations of how States should repair violations committed in their territories. 
 As has already been indicated in the international arena as well as by national courts, reparation for the harm caused is not simply the payment of sums of money. This would be the simplest form that States would have for having caused human rights violations or even crimes against humanity. For this reason, the Inter-American Court, since its first case, has been indicating to the States that economic reparation is only one part of the State's obligation to make reparations. The most important judgments that the regional Court has indicated in its 40 years are marked by the so-called “non-pecuniary reparations”. In other words, reparations that seek to ensure that the events that occurred do not happen again, that the States commit to train their officials in human rights and respect for persons, build schools, hospitals, and roads to improve the living conditions of the victims, etc. 
 For further more about this evolution, this paper develops the main jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court on reparations and how international law has already set important standards to be applied by States.

Transnational Insights for Climate Litigation at the European Court of Human Rights: A South-North Perspective in Pursuit of Climate Justice

The global climate crisis is increasingly recognised as an issue of climate injustice, including because it is causing (and worsening) inequalities and human rights violations. Moreover, responsibility for emissions and vulnerability to climate impacts are not evenly distributed. They vary among and within states. In order to tackle these issues of justice both within and among states, litigants have taken to domestic and regional courts to engage in climate litigation. A body of transnational climate jurisprudence is emerging in which courts are increasingly looking to laws beyond their relevant state or region, engaging with the moral aims of human rights law, and solidifying international climate commitments. In adjudicating climate cases, courts have become important sites of climate justice. The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) is currently adjudicating several important climate cases and could become a key player in responding to the climate crisis. From the point of departure that in a time of climate crisis courts have a crucial role to play in advancing climate justice, we conceptualise climate (in)justice and its significance in climate adjudication. Then, we examine how, in addressing questions of standing and transboundary harm, looking beyond the European Convention on Human Rights legal regime to the Global South (South Africa and the Inter-American System of Human Rights, respectively) could offer valuable transnational insights as the ECtHR adjudicates climate cases. In doing so we hope to contribute to the ongoing transnationalisation of climate jurisprudence.

Compliance with Advisory Opinions in the Inter-American Human Rights System

Compliance with Advisory Opinions in the Inter-American Human Rights System

New cartographies of regional evangelical advocacy: local-multilateral politics from and within the Inter-American Human Rights System. Examples from the Chilean case

Resumen: El presente trabajo desarrollará algunas indagaciones en torno a la participación de organizaciones evangélicas dentro de redes de sociedad civil en el marco del Sistema Interamericano de Derechos Humanos (SIDH), a través de lo que denominamos como Redes Políticas Evangélicas (RPE), identificando algunas transformaciones en los modos de incidencia de estos colectivos, desde instancias multilaterales hacia anclajes locales, y viceversa. El objetivo es dar cuenta de las nuevas dinámicas transnacionales y multilaterales que operan en espacios ligados al campo evangélico latinoamericano, examinando la participación de Coaliciones Evangélicas en el Diálogo de Sociedad Civil de la Organización de Estados Americanos (OEA) y su impacto en el impulso de narrativas político-morales dentro del llamado neoconservadurismo religioso, para luego analizar cómo estas instancias son instrumentalizadas y operativizadas por agentes locales chilenos.

Compliance in Time: Lessons from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights

Abstract This paper integrates the scholarship on compliance with international human rights courts to reflect upon how the literature approaches delays and compliance cycles. Building on this review, we propose a new analytical approach that helps distinguish between reparations prone to immediate or protracted implementation. We introduce two metrics to facilitate the interpretation of delays: the yearly probability of compliance and the expected time to compliance. We also show, using machine-learning tools, how scholars can reconstruct life cycles of compliance. The article illustrates the utility of this approach with an analysis of all cases decided by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) between 1989 and 2019. This analytical framework provides critical insights for courts and activists seeking to promote interventions at key moments when compliance is most likely. Moreover, the study underscores important lessons for the Inter-American Human Rights System. Current concerns about a compliance “crisis” at the IACtHR partly reflect a failure to distinguish between reparation types and the Court's preference for reparations requiring protracted implementation. By modeling compliance life cycles, our study opens a promising research avenue that can facilitate effectual and timely policy intervention.