This chapter examines the diversity of international complaints mechanisms available for human rights violations. It covers regional human rights courts, nonjudicial human rights bodies, and various modes of international complaints, highlighting the differences and similarities in their approaches and functions. The chapter discusses the procedural aspects, the criteria for admissibility, and the effectiveness of different complaints mechanisms. It also explores the role of these mechanisms in providing redress for human rights violations and their impact on the development of international human rights law.

This chapter explores the inter-American system for the protection of human rights within the Organization of American States (OAS). It focuses on the roles and functions of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, as well as other OAS bodies dedicated to human rights protection. The chapter examines the legal framework, mechanisms, and procedures for addressing human rights violations in the Americas. It highlights the achievements and challenges of the Inter-American system in promoting and safeguarding human rights across the region, and the importance of regional cooperation and solidarity.

This chapter examines transnational efforts to uphold the rule of law by regional courts and organizations.  While not originally the primary focus of regional trade regimes and human rights systems in Africa, Latin America, and Europe, these institutions have now taken on a thicker set of obligations toward protecting the rule of law (along with democracy and other related concepts).  The result is that supranational and international organizations have become important actors confronting real-world threats to the rule of law. The chapter compares developments in Europe, Africa, and Latin America.

How does international law protect human rights?  We trace the development of human rights, focusing on the international response to the atrocities of World War II and the rapid pace of human rights conventions.  We demonstrate how the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights started a wave of other conventions designed to codify the treatment to which every human is entitled.  Not every state can achieve the wide array of protections these documents outline, but the UN has established methods for reporting violations that provide some minor satisfaction. The last half of the chapter is devoted to a discussion of regional human rights mechanisms, focusing on the European, Inter-American, and African systems and noting their jurisdictional differences. Finally, the development of mechanisms to respond to genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity are detailed, including the criminal tribunals set up for specific atrocities and the International Criminal Court.

At the regional level, by far the most prolific in terms of jurisprudence is the European Court of Human Rights: between its first judgment on the right to life in September 1995 and through late November 2020, 3,875 judgments concerned the right, of which 476 were issued by the Court’s Grand Chamber. But the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has also made a significant contribution to our understanding of the scope and legal status of the right to life, while the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights brought together learning at the regional and global level in an important General Comment issued in 2015. A major gap in regional human rights protection exists across Asia and the Pacific.

Significant practice has been accumulated on the right to reparation for victims of armed conflict, as a result of the work of international human rights mechanisms, domestic courts, and States undergoing transitional justice processes and setting up domestic reparation programmes. This chapter looks at some of that practice in a nuanced way. It considers the interplay on reparation’s issues taking place between international human rights mechanisms like the European Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and domestic reparation programmes such as those established in Colombia or Guatemala. This interplay is regulated by the principle of subsidiarity, a key principle of international law. This principle manifests itself in different ways in international adjudication, including on issues related to reparations as international human rights mechanisms, including the ECHR and the IACtHR, exercise deference to States in various ways. This interplay poses major challenges as through it the scope and reach of this right is defined, and the role of these bodies decided. This Chapter looks at actual practice by these tribunals, and how they could face that interplay without diminishing their role or the content of the right to reparation

Chapter 1 provides an overview of different theories of justice and how they can inform the development of a civil dimension of international criminal law. This chapter also traces the evolution of different dichotomies of the legal duty to provide reparations and the right to reparation: from perspectives of state versus state, to state versus individual, to individual versus individual. It also outlines the development of a duty to repair for individual perpetrators alongside states’ duty to repair. This introductory chapter thus provides the theoretical foundation that supports the analysis in the following chapters and it sets out the main themes that are discussed throughout the book. This chapter also lays out and discusses some challenges and counterarguments to the inclusion of a reparative dimension to international criminal justice from a theoretical perspective. Finally, this chapter draws on the enlightening jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

This chapter empirically examines the conditions under which the executive has the capacity to respond to adverse judgments with human rights policy change. I argue that the executivehas greater capacity to adopt, administer, monitor, and enforce human rights policy when policy change is more feasible. Specifically, civil and political rights improvements are more directly within the executive's control than are physical integrity rights improvements. I show that civil and political rights judgments are more strongly associated with human rights gains than physical integrity rights judgments in Europe and the Americas. Beyond the feasibility of policy change, I also argue that the executive has greater capacity to respond to adverse judgments with policy change when the state has access to outside resources. I show that adverse judgments are positively related to respect for rights as the state's creditworthiness (institutional investor credit rating) increases.

In Chapter 6, I argue that regional human rights courts are more likely to deter future human rights abuses when the executive is willing to adopt, administer, monitor, and enforce human rights policy as a result of elite pressure. I argue that there are two types of elites important for generating executive willingness: economic elites and political elites. With respect to economic elites, I show that the executive is more willing to adopt, administer, monitor, and enforce human rights policy following an adverse judgment when the state is vulnerable to a loss of economic benefits, like foreign direct investment. With respect to political elites, I argue that the executive is more likely to adopt comprehensive human rights policy in expectation of national judicial or legislative implementation. I find evidence that national judicial implementation and subsequently executive human rights policy change, is more likely when the national judiciary is powerful. I argue that national legislative implementation of adverse regional court judgments is more likely as the size of the legislative opposition grows. I find limited support for the role of the size of the legislative opposition, and I suggest this may be due to key institutional design features of the legislature.

In Chapter 3, I examine patterns of general deterrence in the European and Inter-American Courts of Human Rights.I begin with a discussion of the practices and procedures of the European and Inter-American Courts of Human Rights. Next, I develop a research design to assess general deterrence. I begin by discussing the outcome of interest - regional court effectiveness. In this discussion, I distinguish conceptually and empirically between compliance and effectiveness. To empirically analyze general regional court deterrence, I first examine the influence of regional court presence on respect for rights and find that the presence of the court in the region is not positively associated with better respect for human rights. Next, I examine the influence of regional court activity by looking at the influence of the number of adverse judgments rendered in the region on respect for rights. I find that European Court activity is not significantly associated with greater respect for rights. However, the activity of the Inter-American Court is significantly associated with greater respect for rights. I conclude with a discussion of these divergent findings.

Chapter 2 develops my theory of regional human rights court deterrence. I begin by defining and explaining regional human rights court deterrence, focusing on two types of deterrence: general and specific. I then discuss two mechanisms of deterrence: prosecutorial and social.The chapter then proceeds by examining the role of the executive in regional court deterrence, specifically the role of the executive in the adoption, administration, monitoring, and enforcement of human rights policy. I argue that human rights policy change is costly for the executive, and as a result, the executive must have the capacity and willingness and respond to adverse regional court judgments with human rights policy change. With respect to capacity, I argue that the executive is more likely to undertake feasible human rights policy changes in response to adverse regional court judgments. I also argue that the executive is more likely to respond to adverse judgments with human rights policy change when the executive has access to outside resources or when the state is fiscally flexible. With respect to willingness, I argue that the executive is more likely to undertake human rights policy change when the executive faces pressure from the mass public, economic elites, or political elites.