Regional Human Rights Systems: Perspectives from Africa and the Americas
Semester
In recent decades, much progress has been made by African and American states to create regional institutions to protect and enforce human rights. Today, the African and Inter-American human rights systems are each comprised of a treaty-based Commission and Court, tasked with investigating individual human rights complaints, addressing region-wide issues of concern, and working with member states to improve domestic human rights protection structures.
The Capstone client, Open Society Justice Initiative, works to promote human rights and build legal capacity through litigation, advocacy, research and technical assistance across both the African and Inter-American systems. The objective of this project was to conduct a comparative analysis of these two systems by examining their strengths and weaknesses within the political and operational domains. By focusing on issues pertaining to funding, staffing, and backlog, the team’s research sought to advise the client on challenges particular to their areas of advocacy in these regions, and to make implementable recommendations.
Through literature review and field-based research and analysis, the final report compares and contrasts the regional systems across the aforementioned issues. In the context of historical lessons from past attempts at reform in these spaces, the report concludes with comparative analysis and recommendations for the client relevant to strengthening the African and Inter-American human rights systems.