Chapter 12: States

This chapter looks first (Section A) at the ways in which states interact with international norms, and specifically how they ‘internalize’ treaties and customary international law — that is, how states absorb international human rights norms within their domestic legal and political systems so that international human rights obligations can be implemented and enforced by state authorities. It also considers some of the principal institutional mechanisms used at the national level to promote and uphold international human rights standards.

The next four sections (B-E) of the chapter focus on what can be thought of as horizontal modes of implementing and enforcing human rights. 

Section B looks at sanctions imposed in response to human rights violations. This is a practice long adopted by the United States, with increasing participation by the European Union and other Western states. Such sanctions have had an especially high profile in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Section C examines jurisdictional principles, with particular emphasis on the exercise of universal jurisdiction which involves enforcement by national bodies in cases where there is no direct nexus to the forum state.

Section D turns to the role of national courts in providing remedies to victims of human rights violations that occurred in other countries. The principal historical example was the Alien Tort Statute in the United States, but in recent years it has declined dramatically in importance. 

Finally, Section E considers sovereign and official immunity. It discusses the prospect of achieving justice in light of the ability of states and some officials to invoke such defences to shield themselves from prosecution.