Extraterritorial obligations in the inter-American human rights system

From a Latin-American perspective, even in a context where the rule of law has been under attack or has been very weak, the role of human rights NGOs has been and is very relevant in terms of documenting human rights violations, and seeking and bringing justice for the victims of those violations, as well as acting as a guardian angel to the Inter-American human rights system. The role of NGOs within the Inter-American human rights system has to be understood taking into account the specific political and the legal-normative context on the continent. Indeed, the role played by human rights NGOs in the Americas has responded/responds to the political reality of repressive regimes and present-day fragile democracies struggling to uphold human rights and rule of law standards. Furthermore, the legal-normative context, i.e. the American Convention on Human Rights and the interpretation given by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to its provisions, has also given and gives NGOs ample space to interact through different methods and strategies in a less active to a very active manner with the human rights monitoring bodies from 1959 on.

La Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos (Corte IDH) ha tenido, dentro del Sistema Interamericano de Derechos Humanos, la importante función de garantizar el respeto y protección de los derechos humanos de las personas frente a una posible actuación arbitraria de los Estados, que lesione, impida u obstaculice el ejercicio de los mismos. Es así que, la actuación de la Corte ha sido por muchos años, un instrumento fundamental para una correcta aplicación de los derechos plasmados en la Convención, que ha tenido como centro de actuación, la persona humana. Sin embargo, en los últimos años, la Corte IDH ha dado un giro bastante notorio en relación a la interpretación de los derechos que la Convención define y defiende, a través de sentencias en las que ha llegado a trastocar el núcleo de protección de derechos básicos y elementales, como el derecho a la vida, a la identidad, a la no discriminación, que, de acuerdo con nuestro análisis, afectaría, principalmente, el desarrollo de la persona desde una visión objetiva e integral, con la aparición de serias consecuencias, que expondrían a la Corte a dejar de ser un mecanismo importante de protección jurídica para pasar a ser un mecanismo de expansión de ideologías contrarias a la propia persona.

ABSTRACTAnalysing the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights highlights major problems of access to justice in rural Latin America. A majority of the cases ruled on by the Inter-American Court since its inception in 1979 concern violations of human rights in major urban centres. This despite the fact that the worst human rights violations committed in Latin America in recent decades have targeted rural populations. Under specific historical conditions, some rural victims and their advocates have successfully brought their cases to the Inter-American Court. Notably, most of the Colombian cases adjudicated by the court have concerned events in rural conflict zones. In the case of Peru, the focus has been almost exclusively on events in the capital city, Lima. The stark contrast between Colombia and Peru points to a broader trend. Further research must be carried out to determine why, how and with what effect the rural victims of state-sponsored violence have sought international justice remedies, where these efforts have succeeded, and where they have foundered. Human rights mobilisation at the local level determines where Inter-American Court cases originate. This article considers the geographic distribution of cases brought before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights as a function of the strength of advocacy networks connecting rural and urban areas, and beyond, in relation to Latin American histories of dictatorship, counterinsurgency, and the evolution of the inter-American human rights system itself.

This article examines two recent and significant case law developments in the key institutions of the Inter-American Human Rights System, namely the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The cases are Karen Atala Riffo and Children v Chile and Jessica Lenahan (Gonzales) v United States. The two cases examined are significant because of the creativity employed in the interpretation of human rights provisions and the application of regional human rights standards to domestic violence issues.

Despite its extended criticism, is there any room for the margin of appreciation in the Inter-American Human Rights System? The article claims there is, if we ground the doctrine in the principle of subsidiarity. This principle gives a solid foundation to the margin of appreciation and shows that the doctrine does not respond to an exclusively European reality. It also helps to identify the factors that determine the width of the margin given to the states and how they interact with each other: the absence or presence of absolute rights, the quality of the domestic judiciary, and the need for a closer participation of the community and the expertise of the state. These conditions are analyzed in the light of the case law of the inter-American human rights system. The article explores the proper role of the margin of appreciation within human rights adjudication and its compatibility with the doctrine of conventionality control developed by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

The Inter-American System for Human Rights: Operation And Achievements

The first attempts to combat corruption date back to ancient times and had mainly moral connotation. Despite being an old phenomena, nowadays it takes new shapes and becomes a more common feature of social life, especially in the Latin America region. Corruption is a complex, and multidimensional phenomenon that negatively impacts human rights on many levels. Therefore, serious effort have long been made at global, regional and state levels to combat corruption. The United Nations and regional organizations have adopted numerous non-binding and binding documents with a view to stifling this phenomenon but none of them refer to the issue of impact of corruption on human rights. But it should be stressed that it is very hard to establish a link between corruption and human rights violations. Some efforts has been made by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IAComHR). This article considers whether and how the IACHR and the IAComHR establish the link between corruption and violation of human rights in the inter-American system. It also determines which groups of people are, according the IACHR and the IAComHR, particularly affected by corruption, what measures should be taken to protect those exposed to acts of corruption, what obligations are incumbent on States with a view to preventing, combating and eradicating corruption.

Este ensayo tiene como objetivo estudiar la sistemática de juicio contra el Estado en el sistema interamericano de derechos humanos, lo que se puede llamar de proceso civil internacional en el sistema interamericano. Se dará especial énfasis a la eficacia interna de condenas dictadas por la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos contra Brasil.

This chapter analyzes how freedoms are understood and guaranteed in the Americas and under the inter-American human rights system. Section 1 introduces students to the analysis of the case law of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights with regard to the freedom of belief. It presents examples of cases illustrating the paradigmatic violations of this freedom in the region. Then, it focuses on the recent evolution of the case law in the inter-American system. Section 2 analyzes the recent trends in the protection of the freedom of expression in the Americas. Section 3 deals with the freedom of assembly and association. It considers paradigmatic cases of the violation of these freedoms, and then reviews the recent case law of the inter-American human rights system. The section closes by analyzing potential limits of inter-American jurisprudence to fully protect the freedom of assembly and association.

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.

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.

The Inter-American Human Rights System has broken new ground in the field of violence against women (VAW) by delineating the concept of femicide, the principle of due diligence, clarifying the obligations of the States regarding violence and a adopting a gender perspective on reparations. In recent years, ‘intersectionality’, the study of the interconnections of race, ethnicity, religion, age, class, sexual orientation and other categories of difference in relation to inequality, has been promoted in human rights law for tackling VAW. This approach poses new challenges for the interpretation of cases. This article examines to what extent the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Commission have incorporated an intersectional view of violence against women into cases of femicide and discusses the potential of doing so in the future.

This chapter identifies some situations that affect compliance with the obligation to investigate, prosecute, and punish those responsible for serious human rights violations that, at the same time, constitute a reparation measure ordered by the Inter-American Court in contentious cases against Colombia. Through this preliminary diagnosis, it was possible to identify obstacles in the follow-up carried out by the Inter-American Court, determined by the generality of some of the inter-American orders, the type of obligation they involve, and the delays and difficulties that the Inter-American Court has in obtaining quality information to assess compliance. On the other hand, judicial authorities in Colombia face significant evidentiary obstacles and are immersed in a context of armed conflict that hinders their work. This general approach aims to show the complexity of administering justice in cases of serious human rights violations from a public policy perspective, in order to reflect on possible differentiated strategies, both at the Inter-American Court and within the States, with the objective of strengthening the fight against impunity.

Com o intuito de verificar se no Sistema Interamericano de Direitos Humanos, através da Corte Interamericana de Direitos Humanos (CIDH) há uma resposta satisfatória quando são julgados casos que envolvam direitos coletivos, mesmo sem possuir instrumentos específicos do processo coletivo, foi realizada pesquisa bibliográfica sobre a evolução no tratamento dos direitos coletivos, utilizando como parâmetro os instrumentos de processo coletivo do Brasil. O caso julgado pela CIDH escolhido para análise, através de documentos oficiais, foi o caso da comunidade indígena Yakye Axa contra o Paraguai, julgado no ano de 2010. A análise do caso demonstra que a CIDH possui um procedimento satisfatório para analisar e julgar casos que envolvam direitos coletivos.

Summary Although the Organization of American States’ Inter-American human rights system has played a key role in the advancement of human rights, its work has recently become controversial. Some leftist governments have alleged bias, criticizing the system as a politicized one that prioritizes certain rights over others and embodies a neoliberal ideology that reflects disproportionate US influence. The system has also faced perceptions of cultural bias from Anglophone Caribbean states. This article tests the veracity of these allegations using statistical analysis of Inter-American Commission on Human Rights decisions. It finds that, even when controlling for a range of relevant factors, there have been significant differences in the Commission’s receptiveness to different types of claims of human rights violations. However, the Commission’s decisions have not exhibited any political or cultural biases. Also, to the extent there has been bias involving the United States, it has arguably been bias against the United States.