R2P and National Human Rights Institutions

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 318-341
Author(s):  
Veronika Haász
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Community ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Peace Processes ◽  
National Human ◽  
International Human ◽  
Human Rights Standards ◽  
National Human Rights Institutions ◽  
Domestic Level

National Human Rights Institutions (nhris) have rapidly proliferated worldwide in the last twenty years. They play an important role in the implementation of international human rights standards at the domestic level. Examples, especially from the African and Asian regions show that the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) relates to the work of nhris. Some institutions were established as one of the outcomes of peace processes in order to advance reconciliation and prevent future abuses. Where nhris already exist, the institutions may promote and protect human rights in each phase of the R2P. This paper discusses what role nhris can take up in assisting governments, the international community, and people before, during and after crisis situations. Through concrete country examples, it also highlights the challenges that the institutions must face, and summarises the limits of their influence.

Human Rights, Sovereignty, and the Responsibility to Protect

2017 ◽  
pp. 47-73
Author(s):  
Cristina Lafont
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Global Institutions ◽  
Sovereign Equality ◽  
International Human ◽  
Human Rights Standards

In 2005 the General Assembly unanimously endorsed the Responsibility-to-Protect doctrine. This led to heated debates that suggest that principled commitments to human rights and sovereignty are on a collision course, so that we cannot have international enforcement of demanding human rights standards without simultaneously undermining the sovereign equality of states. To question this assumption, Lafont switches the focus of analysis from the context of military intervention to the global economic order. She shows how demanding international human rights standards can play an essential role in strengthening the sovereign equality of states within global institutions. On this basis, she offers an account of the international community’s responsibility to protect human rights that is more demanding than the currently acknowledged account and which avoids undermining the sovereignty of states.

Human Rights and the State

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonia Cardenas
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Relations ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
National Human ◽  
The World ◽  
New Institutions ◽  
Human Rights Standards ◽  
National Human Rights Institutions

The modern state’s role vis-à-vis human rights has always been ambiguous. States are the basic guarantors of human rights protections, just as they can be brutal violators of human rights. This basic tension is rooted in the very notion of statehood, and it pervades much of the literature on human rights. As the central organizing principle in international relations, state sovereignty would seem to be antithetical to human rights. Sovereignty, after all, is ultimately about having the last word; it is virtually synonymous with the principle of territorial non-interference. Meanwhile, humanitarian intervention would at first glance seem to be a contravention of state sovereignty. Yet not all observers interpret human rights pressures as a challenge to state sovereignty. Modern states can be highly adaptive, no less so when confronted with human rights demands. One of the principal, if overlooked, ways in which states have adapted to rising global human rights pressures is by creating new institutions. This is reflected in the formation of national human rights institutions (NHRIs): permanent state bodies created to promote and protect human rights domestically. These state institutions are remarkable due to their rapid and widespread proliferation around the world, the extent to which they sometimes represent a strategy of appeasement but nonetheless can be consequential, and their potential for domesticating international human rights standards.

Africa's National Human Rights Institutions and the Responsibility to Protect

2010 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 458-478
Author(s):  
Webster Zambara
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Vulnerable Groups ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
National Human ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
International Human ◽  
Human Rights Norms ◽  
National Human Rights Institutions ◽  
The Cold War

AbstractThe essay argues that one of the greatest shifts in the international humanitarian order heralded by the end of the Cold War has been the concept of holding state sovereignty accountable to an international human rights standard. It argues that while the concept of R2P has generally focused on humanitarian intervention at a macro level, the period since the 1990s has also witnessed an increase of micro-level institutions, in the form of National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) that can advance R2P, including 31 such institutions in Africa. NHRIs can potentially bolster R2P and foster peace in countries in which they operate. The general popularity of R2P as an international standard is contrasted with the great suspicion with which it is regarded by a number of governments—particularly in Africa, where sovereignty is guarded with passion as a result of the anticolonial struggles that gave birth to national independence on the continent. The author further argues that NHRIs—when properly institutionalised and functioning optimally—can play an important role in protecting the rights of vulnerable groups, and have the potential to help countries attain international human rights norms and standards without unduly threatening their sovereign independence. The essay examines the role of NHRIs in the four cases of Sierra Leone, Uganda, Tanzania and South Africa, and assesses the establishment and operation of African NHRIs using measures formulated by the internationally agreed Paris Principles of 1993.

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