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Title NGOs, international courts, and state backlash against human rights accountability: evidence from NGO mobilization against Tanzania at the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights
Full text https://hdl.handle.net/1887/3728855
Date 2023
Author(s) De Silva, N.; Plagis, M.A.
Abstract When nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) encounter state resistance to human rights accountability, how do NGOs use international courts for their human rights advocacy strategies? Considering the overlapping phenomena of shrinking civic space within authoritarian, hybrid, and democratically backsliding regimes, and state backlash against international courts, NGOs navigate two potential levels of state backlash against human rights accountability. Building on the interdisciplinary scholarship on legal mobilization, we develop an integrated framework for explaining how states' two-level (domestic and international) backlash tactics can both promote and deter NGOs' strategic litigation at international human rights courts (IHRCs). States' backlash tactics can influence NGOs' opportunities, capacities, and goals for their human rights advocacy, and thus affect whether and how they pursue strategic litigation at IHRCs. We elucidate the value of this framework through case studies of NGOs' litigation against Tanzania at the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights, an understudied IHRC. Drawing on an original data set, interviews, and documentation, we process-trace how Tanzania's various backlash tactics influenced whether and how NGOs litigated at the Court. Our framework and analysis show how state backlash against human rights accountability affects NGOs' mobilization at IHRCs and, relatedly, IHRCs' opportunities for influence. - Exploring the Frontiers of International Law
Subject(s) Human rights; Human rights law; International human rights law; African Union; African human rights; African human rights system; International courts; International human rights courts; African Court; African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights; African Charter; African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights; NGO; NGOs; Human rights defenders; Advocacy; Strategic litigation; Legal mobilisation; Legal mobilization; Court mobilisation; Court mobilization; Transnational advocacy networks; Transnational litigation networks; Tanzania; Backlash; State backlash; Human rights backlash; Court authority; Shrinking civic space; Democratic backsliding
Language en
Type of publication Article / Letter to editor; info:eu-repo/semantics/article; Text
Format application/pdf
Source Law and Society Review
Identifier doi:10.1111/lasr.12639; lucris-id:1285228972
Repository Leiden - University of Leiden
Added to C-A: 2024-06-24;10:46:04