Part D: International and Regional Human Rights Organizations

Chapter 11:
Regional Human Rights Systems

In the realm of human rights, regional intergovernmental systems have played a major role. The Council of Europe moved as early as 1950 to adopt the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and various proposals were made in the early 1950s to include human rights in the frameworks that eventually led to the European Union.[1] It was not until 1969 that the analogous American Convention was adopted, but the Inter-American system began with the adoption of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man in 1948, and saw steady institutional and normative development thereafter.

In 1977, the UN General Assembly (Res. 32/127 (1977)) sought to stimulate the establishment of ‘suitable regional machinery’ in regions where none then existed. Four years later, in 1981, the African Charter of Human and Peoples’ Rights was adopted.

In addition to these three major regional human rights systems, which are the focus of this chapter, various other groups have adopted declarations of human rights and established commissions to promote them.[2] These include the Arab Charter on Human Rights of 2004 overseen by the Arab Human Rights Committee, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s 1990 Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, revised by the 2020 OIC Declaration on Human Rights, and the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights, established in 2009.[3] Sub-regional courts have also been important in some contexts.[4]

The analysis in this chapter puts the three major regional systems into broader perspective and emphasises their centrality to the overall international regime.