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Human rights, state compliance, and social change : assessing national human rights institutions
\"This book critically examines the significance of National Human Rights Institutions by collecting work from experts spanning international law, political science, sociology, and human rights practice\"-- Provided by publisher.
BOOK
Chains of Justice
National human rights institutions-state agencies charged with protecting and promoting human rights domestically-have proliferated dramatically since the 1990s; today more than a hundred countries have NHRIs, with dozens more seeking to join the global trend. These institutions are found in states of all sizes-from the Maldives and Barbados to South Africa, Mexico, and India; they exist in conflict zones and comparatively stable democracies alike. InChains of Justice, Sonia Cardenas offers a sweeping historical and global account of the emergence of NHRIs, linking their growing prominence to the contradictions and possibilities of the modern state.As human rights norms gained visibility at the end of the twentieth century, states began creating NHRIs based on the idea that if international human rights standards were ever to take root, they had to be firmly implanted within countries-impacting domestic laws and administrative practices and even systems of education. However, this very position within a complex state makes it particularly challenging to assess the design and influence of NHRIs: some observers are inclined to associate NHRIs with ideals of restraint and accountability, whereas others are suspicious of these institutions as \"pretenders\" in democratic disguise. In her theoretically and politically grounded examination, Cardenas tackles the role of NHRIs, asking how we can understand the global diffusion of these institutions, including why individual states decide to create an NHRI at a particular time while others resist the trend. She explores the influence of these institutions in states seeking mostly to appease international audiences as well as their value in places where respect for human rights is already strong.The most comprehensive account of the NHRI phenomenon to date,Chains of Justiceanalyzes many institutions never studied before and draws from new data released from the Universal Periodic Review Mechanism of the United Nations Human Rights Council. With its global scope and fresh insights into the origins and influence of NHRIs,Chains of Justicepromises to become a standard reference that will appeal to scholars immersed in the workings of these understudied institutions as well as nonspecialists curious about the role of the state in human rights.
eBook
The role of National Human Rights Institutions at the international and regional levels
National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs), defined by the UN as bodies established to promote and protect human rights, have increased in number since the General Assembly adopted principles governing their effectiveness in 1993. The UN and others have encouraged states to set up such institutions as an indication of their commitment to human rights, and now over 20 such institutions exist in Africa and many more will follow. These institutions have taken various forms including ombudsmen, commissions, or a combination of the two.
eBook
Human Rights in the Asia-Pacific Region
The Asia-Pacific is known for having the least developed regional mechanisms for protecting human rights. This edited collection makes a timely and distinctive contribution to contemporary debates about building institutions for human rights protection in the Asia-Pacific region, in the wake of ASEAN's establishment in 2009 of a sub-regional human rights commission.
Drawing together leading scholarly voices, the book focuses on the systemic issue of institutionalising human rights protection in the Asia-Pacific. It critically examines the prospects for deepening and widening human rights institutions in the region, challenging the orthodox scepticism about whether the Asia-Pacific is \"ready\" for stronger human rights institutions and exploring the variety of possible forms that regional and sub-regional institutions might take. The volume also analyses the impediments to new institutions, whilst questioning the justifications for them. The collection provides a range of perspectives on the issues and many of the chapters bring interdisciplinary insights to bear. As such, the collection will be of interest to scholarly, practitioner, and student audiences in law, as well as to readers in international relations, political science, Asian studies, and human rights.
eBook
Welcoming a New International Human Rights Actor? The Participation of Subnational Human Rights Institutions at the UN
Subnational human rights institutions are often thought of as distinctly local bodies, addressing human rights concerns within their jurisdictions with little attention to the processes and mechanisms of the wider international human rights regime. This article shows that this description is no longer necessarily accurate. Rather, subnational human rights institutions can and do participate in the UN human rights regime in a number of important ways. Such participation is potentially beneficial to the UN human rights processes, and subnational human rights institutions have in fact been welcomed by institutional actors at the UN. Nevertheless, the UN, national human rights institutions, and subnational human rights institutions themselves can all do more to ensure that subnational human rights institutions are able to participate fully in the UN human rights system.
Journal Article
Institutionalization of Participatory Democratic Innovations: Understanding the Roles of Established and Emerging Actors
While existing research has increasingly emphasized the need to embed democratic innovations within formal political structures to ensure their sustainability, analytical frameworks are largely rooted in normative democratic theory and often lack tools for understanding the processes of institutionalization of democratic innovations. We draw on the framework developed for analyzing the institutionalization of National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs), using it as an analogy to better understand the mechanism of these processes, with a specific focus on the roles of the socio-political actors involved. While we acknowledge the structural differences between NHRIs and democratic innovations, we argue that this analogy provides a valuable perspective and theoretical model that could be used for analyzing mechanisms and the roles actors may play in these processes, especially in the context of increasing international support for participatory norms. Ultimately, we contend that successful institutionalization depends on the parallel efforts of state actors, civil society, participation professionals, academics, and international organizations, whose actions may unfold independently yet contribute collectively to the institutionalization of democratic innovations and suggest that the model we propose should be further refined and validated through empirical research.
Journal Article
Conceptualizing and Measuring Institutional Variation in National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs)
A wealth of literature argues that domestic institutions can sometimes restrain government repression. In this article, we highlight an institution tasked specifically with protecting and promoting human rights: the National Human Rights Institution (NHRI). Although common international standards exist, NHRIs exhibit substantial variation in their organization, the rights that they protect, the activities they permit, and the manner in which they appoint their members. Scholarship to date has conceptualized and measured NHRIs dichotomously; an NHRI either exists or it does not. We present data that highlights NHRI heterogeneity collected via content analysis of NHRI annual reports, NHRI websites, national constitutions, government legislation, and other sources. Using these data, we show NHRIs that can publish their findings and NHRIs that can punish offenders are each associated with less state torture. These data will allow future researchers to better explore important questions regarding NHRI origins, design, processes, and effectiveness.
Journal Article
Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War
Two of the most pressing questions facing international historians today are how and why the Cold War ended. Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War explores how, in the aftermath of the signing of the Helsinki Final Act in 1975, a transnational network of activists committed to human rights in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe made the topic a central element in East-West diplomacy. As a result, human rights eventually became an important element of Cold War diplomacy and a central component of détente. Sarah B. Snyder demonstrates how this network influenced both Western and Eastern governments to pursue policies that fostered the rise of organized dissent in Eastern Europe, freedom of movement for East Germans and improved human rights practices in the Soviet Union - all factors in the end of the Cold War.
eBook