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Human Rights Experimentalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2017

Gráinne de Búrca
Gráinne de Búrca*
Affiliation:
Florence Ellinwood Allen Professor of Law, NYU Law School.
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Abstract

Human rights in general and the international human rights system in particular have come under increasing attack in recent years. Quite apart from the domestic and global political events since 2016, including an apparent retreat from international institutions, the human rights system has in recent times come in for severe criticism from academic scholars. Amongst the various criticisms levelled have been: (1) the ineffectiveness and lack of impact of international human rights regimes, (2) the ambiguity and lack of specificity of human rights standards, (3) the weakness of international human rights enforcement mechanisms, and (4) the claim to universalism of human rights standards coupled with the hegemonic imposition of these standards on diverse parts of the world. This article responds to several of those criticisms by introducing the idea of experimentalist governance, interpreting key aspects of the functioning of certain international human rights treaties from the perspective of experimentalist governance theory, and surveying a body of recent scholarship on the effectiveness of such treaties. Contrary to the depiction of international human rights regimes as both ineffective and top-down, the article argues that they function at their best as dynamic, participatory, and iterative systems. Experimentalist governance offers a theory of the causal effectiveness of human rights treaties, brings to light a set of features and interactions that are routinely overlooked in many accounts, and suggests possible avenues for reform of other human rights treaty regimes with a view to making them more effective in practice.

Type
Articles
Information
American Journal of International Law , Volume 111 , Issue 2 , April 2017 , pp. 277 - 316
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 by The American Society of International Law 

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References

1 While prominent recent challenges have been directed at international economic institutions such as the World Trade Organization, investor-state dispute resolution mechanisms, and mega-regional trade agreements, there has also been a rise in challenges to regional and international human rights bodies. In 2016, the UK prime minister, Theresa May, initially called for UK withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), and subsequently for the repeal of the UK Human Rights Act, which incorporates the ECHR. Anushka Asthana & Rowena Mason, UK Must Leave European Convention on Human Rights, Says Theresa May, Guardian (Apr. 25, 2016), at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/apr/25/uk-must-leave-european-convention-on-human-rights-theresa-may-eu-referendum; Michael Wilkinson, Human Rights Act Will Be Scrapped in Favour of British Bill of Rights, Liz Truss Pledges, Telegraph (Aug. 22, 2016), at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/22/new-british-bill-of-rights-will-not-be-scrapped-insists-liz-trus. The Inter-American human rights system has been challenged and weakened in recent years by the withdrawal of Venezuela and vocal criticism from the government of Ecuador, amongst others, and reached a point of crisis in 2016 due to the inadequacy of its funding. See, e.g., Press Release, OAS, Severe Financial Crisis of the IACHR Leads to Suspension of Hearings and Imminent Layoff of Nearly Half its Staff (May 23, 2016), at http://www.oas.org/en/iachr/media_center/PReleases/2016/069.asp; Par Engstrom, Paola Limón & Clara Sandoval, CIDHenCrisis: Urgent Action Needed to Save the Regional Human Rights System in the Americas, Open Democracy (May 27, 2016), at https://www.opendemocracy.net/democraciaabierta/par-engstrom-paola-lim-n-clara-sandoval/cidhencrisis-urgent-action-needed-to-save. For a reaction by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on the array of challenges to human rights in 2016, including to institutions such as the ICC and the Human Rights Council, see As 2016 Draws to a Close, UN Rights Chief Outlines Enormity of Challenges to Human Rights, UN News Centre (Nov. 30, 2016), at http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=55686#.WE8W3-Zrjic.

2 Prominent recent critics, as the titles of their works suggest, include: Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia. Human Rights in History (2012); Eric Posner, The Twilight of Human Rights Law (2014); and Stephen Hopgood, The Endtimes of Human Rights (2014).

3 Some influential earlier critics include: Kennedy, David, The International Human Rights Movement: Part of the Problem?, 15 Harv. Hum. Rts. J. 201 (2002)Google Scholar; David Kennedy, The Dark Sides of Virtue: Reassessing International Humanitarianism (2004); Koskenniemi, Martii, The Effect of Rights on Political Culture, in The EU and Human Rights (Alston, Philip, Bustelo, Mara & Heenan, James eds., 1999)Google Scholar; Koskenniemi, Martii, Human Rights Mainstreaming as a Strategy for Institutional Power, 1 Humanity: Int'l J. Hum. Rts., Humanitarianism & Dev. 47 (2010)Google Scholar; and Makau Mutua, Human Rights: A Political and Cultural Critique (2008). For an overview of earlier feminist critiques of human rights, see Engle, Karen, International Human Rights and Feminisms: When Discourses Meet, 13 Mich. J. Int'l L. 517 (1992)Google Scholar, and more recently Siobhán Mullally, Gender, Culture and Human Rights. Reclaiming Universalism (2006).

4 While the international human rights regime overall consists of more than the international human rights treaty system, the latter is clearly one of its most important components. Arguably the two other most important elements are the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the Human Rights Council, and the array of international mechanisms created to respond to gross violations of human rights, and particularly commissions of inquiry. And while this article does not address the functioning of the UPR, there is interesting evidence emerging of its impact through reasonably deliberative and iterative processes involving civil society participation: see Milewicz, Karolina & Goodin, Robert E., Deliberative Capacity-Building Through International Organizations: The Case of the Universal Periodic Review, 46 Brit. J. Pol. Sci. 1–21 (2016)Google Scholar.

5 See Chilton, Adam S., Using Experiments to Test the Effectiveness of Human Rights Treaties (University of Chicago Public Law and Legal Theory, Working Paper No. 533, 2015)Google Scholar; see also Chilton, Adam S. & Tingley, Dustin, Why the Study of International Law Needs Experiments, 52 Colum. J. Transnat'l L. 173 (2013)Google Scholar.

6 This is certainly not to say that there are no aspects of the international human rights regime that make strongly universalist claims or that operate in a hegemonic and top-down way. The invocation and use by international financial institutions and donors of international aid of human rights standards may well at times do so, and forcible humanitarian intervention in alleged defense of human rights may also do so. The focus of this article, however, is the functioning of the international human rights treaty system (focusing specifically on the CEDAW, CRC, and CRPD), which I argue in many respects can be understood as an experimentalist governance system that is neither hegemonic, top-down, nor strongly universalist in its claims.

7 For elaboration of the ideas of localization and vernacularization, see Merry, Sally Engle, Levitt, Peggy, Rosen, Mihaela Serban & Yoon, Diana, Law from Below: Women's Human Rights and Social Movements in New York City, 44 L. & Soc'y Rev. 101 (2010)Google Scholar; Levitt, Peggy & Merry, Sally, Vernacularization on the Ground: Local Uses of Global Women's Rights in Peru, China, India and the United States, 9 Glob. Networks 441 (2009)Google Scholar; Merry, Sally Engle & Stern, Rachel, The Female Inheritance Movement in Hong Kong: Theorising the Local/Global Interface, 46 Current Anthropology 387 (2005)Google Scholar.

8 For an authoritative recent account, see Sabel, Charles & Zeitlin, Jonathan, Experimentalist Governance, in The Oxford Handbook of Governance, ch. 12 (Levi-Faur, David ed., 2011)Google Scholar.

9 See, e.g., Sabel, Charles F. & Dorf, Michael, A Constitution of Democratic Experimentalism, 98 Colum. L. Rev. 267 (1998)Google Scholar; Sabel, Charles F. & Simon, William H., Minimalism and Experimentalism in the Administrative State, 100 Geo. L.J. 53 (2011)Google Scholar.

10 Herrigel, Gary, Experimentalist Systems in Manufacturing Multinationals (Univ. Chicago, Draft, 2015)Google Scholar, available at http://siepr.stanford.edu/system/files/Herrigel-CPSpaper-revised.pdf.

11 Sabel, Charles F. & Simon, William H., Destabilization Rights: How Public Law litigation succeeds, 117 Harv. L. Rev. 1015 (2004)Google Scholar; Sabel & Dorf, supra note 9.

12 de Búrca, Gráinne, Keohane, Robert O. & Sabel, Charles, New Modes of Pluralist Global Governance, 45 NYU J. Int'l L. & Pol'y 723 (2013)Google Scholar; de Búrca, Gráinne, Keohane, Robert O. & Sabel, Charles, Global Experimentalist Governance, 44(3) Brit. J. Pol. 477–86 (2014)Google Scholar; Sabel, Charles F. & Zeitlin, Jonathan, Experimentalism in Transnational Governance: Emergent Pathways and Diffusion Mechanisms, GREEN (Global Reordering: Evolution Through European Networks, Working Paper No. 9, 2011)Google Scholar.

13 Sabel & Zeitlin, supra note 12, at 4.

14 Id.

15 This synopsis is taken from: de Búrca, Keohane & Sabel, Global Experimentalist Governance, supra note 12.

16 See Gutmann, Jerg, Neuenkirch, Matthias & Neumeier, Florian, Precision-Guided or Blunt? The Effects of US Economic Sanctions on Human Rights (Universitat Trier, Research Papers in Economics No. 9/16, 2016)Google Scholar (using endogenous-treatment regression models to find no support for adverse effects of sanctions on human rights, and some evidence of a positive relationship in relation to women's’ rights and “emancipatory rights”).

17 See for a study, Simone Dietrich & Amanda Murdie, Human Rights Shaming Through INGOs and Foreign Aid Delivery, Rev. Int'l Orgs. (2016), available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2641766.

18 See Sabel, Charles F. & Zeitlin, Jonathan, Learning from Difference: The New Architecture of Experimentalist Governance in the EU, 14 Euro. L.J. 271 (2008)Google Scholar.

19 de Búrca, Gráinne, The EU in the Negotiation of the UN Disability Convention, 35 Euro. L. Rev. 174 (2010)Google Scholar.

20 In addition to a review of the secondary academic and policy literature, the information upon which this section draws is also based on interviews conducted with a range of civil society actors within the three human rights treaty regimes. For the CEDAW, those interviewed include: (1) Dorcas Coker-Appiah, Executive Director of the Gender Centre and former member of the CEDAW Committee; (2) Radhika Coomaraswamy, former UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women; (3) Marsha Freeman, Director of International Women's Rights Action Watch (IWRAW) and Senior Fellow at the University of Minnesota Human Rights Center; (4) Rozana Isa, member of Sisters in Islam (SIS), an NGO working on the rights of Muslim women within the framework of Islam and formerly Senior Programme Officer on Building Capacity for Change at the International Women's Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific; (5) Ivy Josiah, Executive Director of Women's Aid Organisation (WAO) in Malaysia; (6) Younas Khalid, Chief Strategy and Policy Officer with Pakistan's primary women's NGO, The Aurat Foundation; (7) Audrey Lee, program manager for IWRAW-AP; (8) Justine Mbabazi, human rights advocate who presented the collective NGO Shadow Report for Rwanda at the 43rd CEDAW Committee session; (9) Caroline Schlecker, Social Affairs Officer, Women's Rights Section, Division for the Advancement of Women, at UN Women; and (10) Jakob Schneider, Human Rights Officer at the UN and secretary to the CEDAW Committee. For the CRC, those interviewed were: (1) Roisin Fegan, Child Rights Officer for Child Rights Connect; (2) Veronica Yates, Director of Child Rights International Network (CRIN); (3) Edel Quinn, Legal and Policy Officer at Children's Rights Alliance; (4) Mafalda Leal, Senior Policy Coordinator of Child Rights & Child Practices at Eurochild; (5) Johan Martens, Policy & Partnership Coordinator at Child Helpline International; (6) Francois-Xavier Souchet, Programme Officer for Legal Support, EPCAT (End Child Prostitution, Pornography and Sex Trafficking) International; and (7) Jennifer Philpot-Nissen, formerly senior adviser for human rights at World Vision International. For the CRPD, those interviewed were: (1) Janina Arsenjeva, European Disability Forum; (2) Regina Atalla, President of RIADIS, (the Latin-American network of organizations for persons with disabilities and their families); (3) Alexandre Cote, Capacity Building Program Officer, International Disability Alliance; (4) Amy Farkas, Disability Section, Programme Division, UNICEF; (5) An-Sofie Leenknecht, Human Rights Officer, European Disability Forum; (6) Ron McCallum, Chair of the CRPD Committee; (7) Amanda McRae, Disability Rights Researcher at Human Rights Watch; (8) Victoria Lee, Human Rights Officer responsible for UN Treaty Bodies at the International Disability Alliance; (9) Lauro Purcil, Philippine Coalition on the UN CRPD; (10) Ana Sastre Campo, CRPD Delegate, CERMI (DPO umbrella organization and independent monitoring mechanism in Spain); and (11) Marianne Schulze, Chairperson of the Austrian Independent Monitoring Committee.

21 de Búrca, Gráinne, Stumbling into Experimentalism?: The EU Anti-discrimination Regime, in Experimentalist Governance in the EU: Towards a New Architecture (Sabel, Charles F. & Zeitlin, Jonathan eds., 2010)Google Scholar.

22 Regional human rights treaty systems, such as the European Convention on Human Rights, the Inter-American Human Rights system, and the African Human Rights system, are also not included within the scope of the present article, although some of them share a number of features of experimentalist governance. For analyses of the ECHR that emphasize the open-endedness of standards and the lack of strictly hierarchical or top-down authority, see Krisch, Nico, The Open Architecture of European Human Rights Law, 71 Mod. L. Rev. 183 (2008)Google Scholar, and de Schutter, Oliver & Tulkens, François, The European Court of Human Rights as a Pragmatic Institution, in Conflicts Between Fundamental Rights 169 (Brems, Eva ed., 2008)Google Scholar.

23 For overviews and analyses of the treaty system, see UN Human Rights Treaty Bodies: Law and Legitimacy (Keller, Helen & Ulfstein, Geir eds., 2015)Google Scholar; Suzanne Egan, The UN Human Rights Treaty System: Law and Procedure (2011); New Challenges for the UN Human Rights Machinery: What Future for the Treaty Body System and the Human Rights Council Procedures (Bassiouni, M. Cherif & Schabas, William A. eds., 2011)Google Scholar; The UN Human Rights Treaty System in the 21st Century (Bayefsky, Anne F. ed., 2000)Google Scholar; The Future of UN Human Rights Treaty Monitoring (Alston, Philip & Crawford, James eds., 2000)Google Scholar.

24 UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Follow-Up to Concluding Observations: What Is the Follow-Up Procedure?, at www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/Pages/FollowUpProcedure.aspx. The CEDAW Committee is one of the six to have adopted a formal follow-up procedure, but not, as yet, the CRC or CRPD Committees.

25 See UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Strengthening the United Nations Human Rights Treaty Body System, UN Doc. A/66/860, at 44 (June 26, 2012); GA Res. 68/268 (April 21, 2014). For an overview, see Broecker, Christen, The Reform of the United Nations’ Human Rights Treaty Bodies, 18(16) ASIL Insights (Aug. 8, 2014)Google Scholar, at https://www.asil.org/insights/volume/18/issue/16/reform-united-nations%E2%80%99-human-rights-treaty-bodies.

26 For an earlier critique of the human rights treaty body system calling for more active participation for NGOs within the treaty body system and calling for other related reforms, see Clapham, Andrew, UN Human Rights Reporting Procedures: An NGO Perspective, in The Future of UN Human Rights Treaty Monitoring, 175–98 (Alston, Philip & Crawford, James eds., 2000)Google Scholar. While there is a large body of academic literature on the subject of reform of the treaty body system, there has been only a marginal emphasis on the role of civil society. See, e.g., the single chapter (chapter 9) on civil society in a seventeen chapter book, Philip Lynch & Ben Schokman, Taking Human Rights from the Grassroots to Geneva and Back: Strengthening the Relationship Between UN Treaty Bodies and NGOs, in New Challenges for the UN Human Rights Machinery, supra note 23, at 173–92.

27 Cohen, Cynthia Price, The Role of Nongovernmental Organizations in the Drafting of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, 12 Hum. Rts. Q. 137–47 (1990)Google Scholar; Fitzpatrick, Joan, United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child: Toward Adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child: A Policy-Oriented Overview, 83 ASIL Proc. 155–57 (1989)Google Scholar.

28 In 1983, several years into the drafting process, a number of NGOs aligned to form the NGO Ad Hoc Group on the Drafting of the Convention of the Rights of the Child: Hart, Stuart N., Non-governmental Efforts Supporting U.S. Ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, 4 Loy. Poverty L.J. 141, 145 (1998)Google Scholar.

29 Article 45 of the CRC provides that the committee “may invite the specialized agencies, [UNICEF] and other competent bodies … to provide expert advice on the implementation of the Convention in areas falling within the scope of their respective mandates” (emphasis added).

30 The provision corresponding to Article 45 of the CRC is Article 22, which provides only that: “The [UN] specialized agencies shall be entitled to be represented at the consideration of the implementation of such provisions of the present Convention as fall within the scope of their activities. The Committee may invite the specialized agencies to submit reports on the implementation of the Convention in areas falling within the scope of their activities” and makes no reference to “other competent bodies.”

31 See Clapham, supra note 26; Brett, Rachel, The Role and Limits of Human Rights NGOs at the United Nations, XLIII Pol. Stud. 96 (1995)Google Scholar,

32 See, e.g., de Búrca, The EU in the Negotiation of the UN Disability Convention, supra note 19; Melish, Tara J., The UN Disability Convention: Historic Process, Strong Prospects, and Why the U.S. Should Ratify, 14 Hum. Rts. Brief. 37 (2007)Google Scholar; Mégret, Frédéric, The Disabilities Convention: Towards a Holistic Conception of Rights, 12(2) Int'l J. Hum. Rts. 261 (2008)Google Scholar; The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: European and Scandinavian Perspectives (Arnardóttir, Oddný Mjöll & Quinn, Gerard eds., 2009)Google Scholar.

33 See, e.g., Raustiala, Kal, The Role of NGOs in International Treaty-Making, in The Oxford Guide to Treaties, 150–72 (Hollis, Duncan ed., 2012)Google Scholar; Gemmill, Barbara & Bamidele-Izu, Abimbola, The Role of NGOs and Civil Society in Global Environmental Governance, in Global Environmental Governance: Options and Opportunities, 77–100 (Esty, Daniel C. & Ivanova, Maria H. eds., 2002)Google Scholar; Charnovitz, Steve, Nongovernmental Organizations and International Law, 100 AJIL 348 (2006)Google Scholar.

34 See supra note 20.

35 See de Búrca, Keohane & Sabel, New Modes of Pluralist Global Governance, supra note 12, pt. III; de Búrca, The EU in the Negotiation of the UN Disability Convention, supra note 19.

36 Article 1 provides that “the term ‘discrimination against women’ shall mean any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by women, irrespective of their marital status, on a basis of equality of men and women, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field.” For a detailed discussion of the drafting of the CEDAW, see Susanne Zwingel, How Do International Women's Rights Become Effective in Domestic Contexts? An Analysis of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (PhD thesis, Bochum, 2005).

37 For a discussion see supra note 19.

38 In the CEDAW context, the most prominent of these is IWRAW (International Women's Rights Action Watch, www.iwraw.net), in the CRC context it is CRIN (Child Rights International Network, www.crin.org), and in the CRPD context it is the IDA (International Disability Alliance, www.internationaldisabilityalliance.org).

39 See the Office of the High Commission for Human Rights, National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) Interaction with the UN Treaty Body System, OHCHR Information Note 2011/411 (2011), and the sources cited supra at note 24.

40 These were an outcome of the Beijing World Conference on Women, 1995. UN Women, Beijing and Its Follow-Up, at http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/beijing.

41 UNICEF, at http://www.unicef.org/crc.

42 UN Women, at http://www.unwomen.org.

43 UN Women, Commission on the Status of Women, at http://www.unwomen.org/en/csw.

44 UN Division for Social Policy and Development Disability, at http://www.un.org/disabilities.

45 For critical analysis of the role of NGOs and others in the construction of indicators, which are increasingly used to monitor and assess the performance of states under human rights treaties including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, see Satterthwaite, Margaret & Rosga, Ann-Jannette, The Trust in Indicators: Measuring Human Rights, 27 Berk. J. Int'l L. 253 (2009)Google Scholar. See also Merry, Sally Engle, Measuring the World: Indicators, Human Rights, and Global Governance, 52 Current Anthropology 583 (2011)Google Scholar; Merry, Sally Engle, Human Rights Monitoring and the Question of Indicators, in Human Rights at the Crossroads, 140–52 (Goodale, M. ed., 2013)Google Scholar.

46 In the UK and Ireland, for example, the Children Rights Alliance NGO plays this role. According to one interviewee: “The Children's Rights Alliance is a coalition of participating NGOs which began mainly as a body dedicated to gathering expertise and engaging in shadow reporting, has since grown into an organization of NGOs that provide expertise and information to states parties in the process of reporting to the Committee and working to comply with the ‘concluding observations’ of the committee. Working for over one hundred national NGOs in Ireland, the coalition has grown well beyond its shadow reporting duties and now uses legal expertise to help direct NGOs that provide services on the ground, which in turn provide the coalition with information on the gaps in the legislative regime and where the state party must be pressured to make reforms.” (Interview notes on file with author.).

47 See, for example, Susanne Zwingel's discussion of the influence of the International Women's Rights Action Watch, (IRWAW) and IRWAW-Asia on the CEDAW committee, in Zwingel, supra note 36, ch. 8. On the ways in which, and the extent to which, NGOs influence the output of the committee on the Rights of the Child, see Turkelli, Gamze Erdem & Vandenhole, Wouter, The Convention on the Rights of the Child: Repertoires of NGO Participation, 12 Hum. Rts. L. Rev. 33, 46 (2012)Google Scholar.

48 See O'Flaherty, Michael, The Concluding Observations of United Nations Human Rights Treaty Bodies, 6 Hum. Rts. L. Rev. 27 (2006)Google Scholar.

49 See the study conducted by the NGO group For the Rights of the Child, The Use of Concluding Observations for Monitoring the Implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child The Experiences of NGO Coalitions in Nine Country Case Studies (CRIN-NGO Group Joint Working Paper No. 2, 2005)Google Scholar, at http://www.childrightsconnect.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/WPConcludingObs.pdf. The nine country case studies were from Bangladesh, Canada, Georgia, Germany, India, Jamaica, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Pakistan. See also Eva Clarhäll, Monitoring Implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: A Review of Concluding Observations by the UN CRC Committee Regarding General Measures of Implementation, Save the Children (2011), at http://resourcecentre.savethechildren.se/sites/default/files/documents/5194.pdf.

50 See for an example the case of Albania infra notes 119–20 and accompanying text.

51 See Merry, Sally Engle, Transnational Human Rights and Local Activism: Mapping the Middle, 108 Am. Anthropologist 38 (2006)Google Scholar; Levitt & Merry, supra note 7. For criticism of the CEDAW Committee for its failure to include the involvement of customary law elites in its recommendations, in order to facilitate the process of domestic reception and adaption of international norms, see Banks, Angela, CEDAW, Compliance and Custom: Human Rights Enforcement in Sub-Saharan Africa, 32 Fordham Int'l L.J. 781 (2008–09)Google Scholar. See also Campbell, Meghan & Swenson, Geoffrey, Legal Pluralism and Women's Rights After Conflict: The Role of CEDAW, 48 Colum. Hum. Rts. L. Rev. 112 (2016)Google Scholar.

52 To quote from an interview with a spokesperson for the NGO Sisters in Islam: “Where we come in is particularly in relation to Article 16 (concerning family life, marriage, etc.). Much of the challenge for reporting Muslim countries concerns Article 16, given the influence of Sharia law and the Qu'ran. What we want to do here is to say is that this should not give reason to the CEDAW Committee to stop questioning. Sometimes when the Committee is presented with words of this kind (God, Sharia, religion) the Committee does not have any response. We want to give the Committee the language to challenge governments when these arguments are put forward. We want to expand the arguments they can deploy. What we want to do is to say that, because Islam is being used to inform public policy, we will point out the diversity of Islamic jurisprudence on these issues … and the heterogeneity of Islamic culture.” (Interview notes on files with author.). For examples of this kind of cultural resistance by states, see Merry, Sally Engle, Human Rights Monitoring, State Compliance, and the Problem of Information, in The New Legal Realism, Vol. II: Studying Law Globally, 32–52 (Klug, Heinz & Merry, Sally Engle eds., 2016)Google Scholar.

53 See, e.g., Merry, Salle Engle, Transnational Human Rights and Local Activism: Mapping the Middle, 108 Am. Anthropologist 42 (2005)Google Scholar. (“Human rights intermediaries put global human rights ideas into familiar symbolic terms and use stories of local indignities and violations to give life and power to global movements. They hold a double consciousness, combining both transnational human rights concepts and local ways of thinking about grievances. They may be local activists, human rights lawyers, feminist NGO leaders, academics, or a host of other people who have one foot in the transnational community and one at home. They are constrained by the human rights discourse and by the cultural meanings of the situation where they are working.”).

54 The extent to which civil society bodies are providing services directly to children, arguably stepping in to fulfill the role of the state under the Convention, led the Committee on the Rights of the Child to organize a discussion day on the theme of “the private sector as service provider and its role in implementing child rights,” and recommended the establishment of a code of conduct for nonstate actors. See Committee on the Rights of the Child, The Private Sector as Service Provider and its Role in Implementing Child Rights, excerpted from CRC/C/121, 31st Sess. (Sept. 20, 2002), at http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/CRC/Discussions/Recommendations/Recommendations2002.pdf.

55 See the report of Defence for Children International, National Impact 33 (2013)Google Scholar, on their work promoting the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in Angola and Cameroon, and also in middle income countries like Colombia.

56 Interview with Children's Rights Alliance in relation to the implementation of the Convention of the Rights of the Child in Ireland and the UK. (Interview notes on file with author.).

57 Šahović, Nevena Vučković, The Role of Civil Society in Implementing the General Measures of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, 23–24 (Innocenti Working Paper, UNICEF Florence, 2010)Google Scholar.

58 Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink were amongst the first to draw attention to the important role of these networks in their book Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (1998). See also The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change (Risse, Thomas, Ropp, Stephen C. & Sikkink, Kathryn eds., 1999)Google Scholar

59 See supra note 38.

60 Volz, Anna, Advocacy Strategies Training Manual: General Comment No. 10: Children's Rights in Juvenile Justice, Defence for Children Int'l 3 (2009)Google Scholar.

61 See World Conferences on Women, UN Women, at http://www.unwomen.org/en/how-we-work/intergovernmental-support/world-conferences-on-women.

62 See Shelton, Dinah, The Legal Status of Normative Pronouncements of Human Rights Treaty Bodies, in Coexistence, Cooperation and Solidarity 553 (Hestermeyer, Holger P., König, Doris, Matz-Lück, Nele, Röben, Volker, Seibert-Fohr, Anja, Stoll, Peter-Tobias & Vöneky, Silja eds., 2011)Google Scholar.

63 Marry, Sally Engle, Constructing a Global Law-Violence Against Women and the Human Rights System, 18 L. & Soc. Inquiry 941, 952 (2003)Google Scholar.

64 For a detailed account of the way in which women's NGOs and other concerned organizations mobilized from the 1970s onward to bring the issue of gender violence to international prominence, and gradually to the attention of a range of prominent UN bodies including the CEDAW Committee, see Joachim, Jutta, Framing Issues and Seizing Opportunities: The UN, NGOs, and Women's Rights, 47 Int'l Stud. Q. 247, 254–60 (2003)Google Scholar. For other accounts of these achievements, see Fried, Susana T., Violence Against Women, 6 Health & Hum. Rts. 88–111 (2003)Google Scholar, and Bunch, Charlotte, Foreword: Feminist Quandaries on Gender and Violence: Agency, Universality, and Human Security, in Violence and Gender in the Globalized World: The Intimate and the Extimate (Bahun, Sanja & Rajan, V.G. Julie eds., 2d ed. 2015)Google Scholar, and Calvo-García, Manuel, The Role of Social Movements in the Recognition of Gender Violence as a Violation of Human Rights: From Legal Reform to the Language of Rights, 6 Age of Hum. Rts. J. 60 (2016)Google Scholar

65 See Comm. on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), General Recommendations Made by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, n. 12, 19, at http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/recommendations/recomm.htm.

66 Comm. on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, CEDAW General Recommendation No. 14, UN Doc. A/45/38 and Corrigendum (1990), available at http://www.refworld.org/docid/453882a30.html.

67 Comm. on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, CEDAW General Recommendation No. 13: Equal Remuneration for Work of Equal Value, UN Doc. A/44/38 (1989), available at http://www.refworld.org/docid/453882aa10.html.

68 Comm. on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, CEDAW General Recommendation No. 15: Avoidance of Discrimination Against Women in Nation Strategies for the Prevention and Control of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS), UN Doc. A/45/38 (1990), available at http://www.refworld.org/docid/453882a311.html.

69 Comm. on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, CEDAW General Recommendation No. 21: Equality in Marriage and Family Relations, UN Doc. A/49/38 (1994), available at http://www.refworld.org/docid/48abd52c0.html.

70 Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, CEDAW General Recommendation No. 24: Article 12 of the Convention (Women and Health), UN Doc. A/54/38//Rev.1 (1999), available at http://www.refworld.org/docid/453882a73.html.

71 Comm. on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, General Recommendation No. 26 on Women Migrant Workers, UN Doc. CEDAW/C/2009/WP.1/R (2008), available at http://www.refworld.org/docid/4a54bc33d.html.

72 UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Committee on the Rights of a Child, at http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/CRC/Pages/CRCIndex.aspx.

73 For a collection of the CRC's General Comments see, UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Library Collections, at http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/treatybodyexternal/TBSearch.aspx?Lang=en&TreatyID=5&DocTypeID=11.

74 The issue of violence against children is mentioned in Article 19 of the Convention, but mainly in the context of parental violence, sexual abuse, and neglect.

75 UN GAOR, 61st Sess., Report of the Independent Expert for the United Nations Study on Violence Against Children, UN Doc. A/61/299 (Aug. 29, 2006), at https://www.unicef.org/violencestudy/reports/SG_violencestudy_en.pdf.

76 Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence Against Children, at http://srsg.violenceagainstchildren.org.

77 See the conclusions and recommendations adopted by the Committee on the Rights of the Child at its 20th Session: Comm. on the Rights of the Child, Compilation of the Conclusions and Recommendations Adopted by the Committee on the Rights of the Child, UN Doc. CRC/C/19/Rev9 (1998), available at http://repository.un.org/handle/11176/384006.

78 Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, at http://childrenandarmedconflict.un.org.

79 See UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, at www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/CRPD/Pages/DGDontherighttoeducationforpersonswithdisabilities.aspx.

80 See Guzman, Andrew T. & Linos, Katerina, Human Rights Backsliding, 102 Calif. L. Rev. 603 (2014)Google Scholar (arguing that international human rights standards are already sometimes used within domestic political debates to cut back on existing rights and standards rather than to promote new protections).

81 See supra note 24 and accompanying text.

82 See infra note 105.

83 See Katerina Linos, The Democratic Foundations of Policy Diffusion (2013).

84 For a richly comprehensive account of the functioning of the CEDAW regime effectively supporting the argument that that treaty system operates in an experimentalist way, see Zwingel, supra note 36.

85 Posner, supra note 2, at 78.

86 The argument advanced by Burton, Emilie Hafner & Ron, James, Seeing Double: Human Rights Impact Through Qualitative and Quantitative Eyes, 61 World Pol. 360 (2009)Google Scholar to the effect that qualitative studies tend to suggest a more optimistic and positive impact of human rights treaties while the results of quantitative studies are more skeptical—perhaps implying selection bias on the part of those conducting qualitative studies—has been rebutted by Simmons, Beth A., From Ratification to Compliance: Quantitative Evidence of the Spiral Model, in The Persistent Power of Human Rights: From Commitment to Compliance 43–60 (Risse, Thomas, Ropp, Stephen & Sikkink, Kathryn eds., 2013)Google Scholar, and Xinyuan Dai, The “Compliance Gap” and the Efficacy of International Human Rights Institutions, in The Persistent Power of Human Rights: From Commitment to Compliance, id., 85–102, as not being borne out by the various studies cited. Simmons found no relevant difference between the findings of the different kind of studies, while Dai pointed to the negative findings of some qualitative studies and the positive findings of some quantitative studies.

87 Keith, Linda, The United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: Does It Make a Difference in Human Rights Behavior?, 36 J. Peace Res. 95 (1999)Google Scholar.

88 Hathaway, Oona A., Do Human Rights Treaties Make a Difference?, 111 Yale L.J. 1935 (2002)Google Scholar.

89 Burton, Emilie Hafner & Tsutsui, Kiyoteru, Justice Lost! The Failure of International Human Rights Law to Matter Where Needed Most, 44 J. Peace Res. 407 (2007)Google Scholar.

90 For a critique of the methodology, theoretical framework and policy prescriptions of the Hathaway study see Goodman, Ryan & Jinks, Derek, Measuring the Effects of Human Rights Treaties, 14 Eur. J. Int'l L. 171 (2003)Google Scholar. Lupu, Yonatan, in The Informative Power of Treaty Commitment: Using the Spatial Model to Address Selection Effects, 57 Am. J. Pol. Sci. 912 (2013)Google Scholar, discusses the findings of scholars, including Hathaway, Hafner-Burton, and Tsutsui, that the human rights practices of some states worsened after ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Convention Against Torture, suggesting that these findings may have been due to insufficient accounting for selection effects.

91 See Christopher Fariss, The Changing Standard of Accountability and the Positive Relationship Between Human Rights Treaty Ratification and Compliance, Brit. J. Pol. Sci. (forthcoming 2017); Lupu, supra note 90.

92 Simmons, supra note 86.

93 Dai, Xinyuan, The Conditional Effects of International Human Rights Institutions, 36 Hum. Rts. Q. 569 (2014)Google Scholar. Neumayer, Eric, Do International Human Rights Treaties Improve Respect for Human Rights, 49 J. Conflict Resol. 925 (2005)Google Scholar similarly criticizes the mismatch between the treaties whose ratification was selected for examination in these studies and the substantive rights whose protection the studies were seeking to assess.

94 Dai, The Compliance Gap and the Efficacy of International Human Rights Institutions, supra note 86,

95 Dai, The Conditional Effects of International Human Rights Institutions, supra note 93.

96 Supra note 93.

97 Beth Simmons, Mobilizing for Human Rights 371–78 (2009) (“One of the lessons that follows from the research in this book is the crucial role that domestic actors play in their own human rights fate. Rights stakeholders around the world have actively made decisions about when and how to employ the norms contained in human rights treaties to influence practices on the ground in their countries. Sometimes they have done this with outside help, but the locals are the ones who carry the ball and take the risks. They also make decisions about what is culturally appropriate in their society and how best to deploy limited resources in order to realize the greatest benefits from the promises of the human rights treaties their governments have signed… . The most important policy advice that comes from this study … is domestic ownership. Human rights treaties matter where local groups have taken up the torch for themselves.”).

98 See, e.g., Hill, Daniel, Estimating the Effects of Human Rights Treaties on State Behaviour, 72 J. Pol. 1161 (2010)Google Scholar (finding considerable variance between the results found in relation to the Convention Against Torture on the one hand and CEDAW on the other and suggesting that more treaty-specific theorizing may be needed).

99 Englehart, Neil A. & Miller, Melissa K., The CEDAW Effect: International Law's Impact on Women's Rights, 13 J. Hum. Rts. 22 (2014)Google Scholar. They find less evidence of positive impact in the case of women's economic rights. See also the study carried out by Cho, Seo Young, International Women's Convention, Democracy and Gender Equality, 95 Soc. Sci. Q. 719 (2014)Google Scholar, suggesting that the interaction of democracy with the Convention is significant in advancing women's social rights.

100 Zwingel, supra note 36, and more recently, Zwingel, Susanne, How Do Norms Travel? Theorizing International Women's Rights in Transnational Perspective, 56 Int'l Stud. Q. 115 (2012)Google Scholar. See also the study by Sally Engle Merry of the impact of the CEDAW, looked at in particular through the lens of the state reporting system, as well as at the issues on which states resist the impact of the treaty: Merry, Sally Engle, Gender Justice and CEDAW: The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, 9 J. Women Middle East & Islamic World 49 (2011)Google Scholar; and Merry, Salle Engle, Human Rights Monitoring, State Compliance, and the Problem of Information, in The New Legal Realism, Vol. II: Studying Law Globally 32–52 (Klug, Heinz & Merry, Sally Engle eds., 2016)Google Scholar. See also the study done by Byrnes, Andrew & Freeman, Marsha, The Impact of the CEDAW Convention: Paths to Equality. A Study for the World Bank (World Development Report: Gender and Development, 2011)Google Scholar.

101 Jasper Krommendijk, The Domestic Impact and Effectiveness of State Reporting Under UN Human Rights Treaties in the Netherlands, New Zealand and Finland: Paper-Pushing or Policy Prompting? (2014). In his chapter on the CEDAW, the author finds that the effectiveness of the “concluding observations” of the human rights treaty bodies are not the result of a compliance pull from the committee or treaty body itself, but rather are attributable to the mobilization and lobbying of NGOs and the attention given in domestic parliaments to the concluding observations. Id. at 198. Similarly, with regard to his findings on the CRC and its impact in the Netherlands, he states in his concluding chapter that the effectiveness of the concluding observations of the committee regarding the CRC is to be “attributed to the crucial role of domestic NGOs who organized themselves in the Dutch Children's Rights Coalition.” Id. at 252.

102 Laura Lundy, Ursula Kilkelly, Bronagh Byrne & Jason Kang, The U.N. Convention On The Rights Of The Child: A Study of Legal Implementation in 12 Countries 8 (2012)Google Scholar

103 Šahović, Nevena Vučković, The Role of Civil Society in Implementing the General Measures of the Convention on the Rights of the Child 6 (UNICEF, Innocenti Working Paper, IWP 2010–18, June 2010)Google Scholar.

104 Id. at 17.

105 Andrew Byrnes & Marsha Freeman, The Impact of the CEDAW Convention: Paths to Equality (World Bank World Development Report, 2012), available at http://www.gsdrc.org/document-library/the-impact-of-the-cedaw-convention-paths-to-equality.

106 Id. at 51–52.

107 See, e.g., International Disability Alliance, Effective Use of International Human Rights Monitoring Mechanisms to Protect the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (May 2010), at http://www.edan-wcc.org/index.php/resources/publications/item/57-effective-use-of-international-human-rights-monitoring-mechanisms-to-protect-the-rights-of-persons-with-disabilities; Disability Council International, Shadow Reporting to the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, at http://disabilitycouncilinternational.org/documents/DisabCouncilNGOsPracticalGuide.pdf.

108 See Liebowitz, Debra & Zwingel, Susanne, Gender Equality Oversimplified: Using CEDAW to Counter the Measurement Obsession, 16 Int'l Stud. Rev. 362 (2014)Google Scholar. They argue in particular that the long slow dialogic nature of the change that took place in Chile in relation to reproductive rights on account of would be missed out by many of the statistical surveys. More generally, for a critique of the increasing emphasis on quantification in the field of human rights, see Sally Engle Merry, The Seductions of Quantification: Measuring Human Rights, Gender Violence and Sex Trafficking (2016).

109 Fariss, supra note 91.

110 For an example of human rights training and compliance brought about by other kinds of nonstate actor, see the work of the International Rescue Committee in refugee camps: Yvonne Hutchinson, The Transference of Gender-Based Norms in the Law Reform Process, Querelles: Jahrbuch für Frauen und Geschlechtervorschung (2013), at http://www.querelles.de/index.php/qjb/article/view/6/17.

111 The Persistent Power of Human Rights, supra note 86.

112 Chilton, Adam & Posner, Eric, Respect for Human Rights: Law and History (University of Chicago Coase-Sandor Institute for Law and Economics, Working Paper No. 770, 2016)Google Scholar.

113 Chilton has separately argued that the methodological difficulty most studies face in showing any kind of causality in the relation between ratification of human rights treaties and improved human rights outcomes is that states are not randomly assigned commitments to human rights treaties, but instead select agreements based on their expected behavior, and that most major human rights treaties are in any case almost universally ratified. He argues for greater use of experimental methods to overcome some of these methodological limitations: Chilton, Using Experiments to Test the Effectiveness of Human Rights Treaties, supra note 5; Chilton & Tingley, Why the Study of International Law Needs Experiments, supra note 5.

114 Nussbaum, Martha C., Women's Progress and Women's Human Rights, 38 Hum. Rts. Q. 589–91 (2016)Google Scholar.

115 Id. at 593.

116 See also Conrad, Courtenay & Ritter, Emily Hencken, Treaties, Tenure, and Torture: The Conflicting Domestic Effects of International Law, 75 J. Pol. 397 (2013)Google Scholar.

117 On how to take account of changes in the repressive nature of a state for the purposes of measuring human rights compliance, see Schnakenberg, Keith & Fariss, Christopher, Domestic Patterns of Human Rights Practices, 2 Pol. Sci. Res. & Methods 1 (2014)Google Scholar. See also the argument of Heather Smith-Cannoy, based on both quantitative and qualitative analysis, that even within insincere and somewhat repressive states such as Tajikistan, Kyrgystan, and Hungary, the presence of active domestic groups and their use of complaints systems set up under UN human rights treaties can lead to important change: Heather M. Smith-Cannoy, Insincere Commitments: Human Rights Treaties, Abusive States and Citizen Activism (2012).

118 For all of the documents submitted to the Committee on the Rights of the Child, including the various NGO shadow reports as well as the government's report and the Committee's list of issues and concluding observations: http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/treatybodyexternal/SessionDetails1.aspx?SessionID=368&Lang=en.

119 The introduction declares that: “In order to draft this report we have conducted talks, interviews, questionnaires, workshops, trainings, and meetings with children of various ages and adults, which resulted in the following findings.” United for Child Care and Protection, Report on Children's Rights in Albania to the UN CRC Committee (2011).

120 An updated 2012 summary report submitted to the CRC by the Albanian Children's Alliance (drawn from their earlier longer report) focused on ten core issues: (1) child exploitation and child labor (begging, etc.); (2) violence against children (and abuse/neglect); (3) juvenile justice; (4) institutionalized children; (5) children of divorced parents; (6) children with disabilities; (7) children of minorities (Roma, in particular); (8) education, especially early childhood; (9) budgeting for children and children's rights standards; and (10) establishing a functional child protection system.

121 The eight issues emphasized in the United for Child Protection children's report were: (1) child poverty, resulting in begging, social exclusion, and discrimination; (2) children from minorities (particularly Roma and Egyptian minorities); (3) violence against children in families and schools; (4) children without parental care/institutionalized children; (5) corrupt teachers/poor education; (6) children with disabilities; (7) general lack of knowledge of teachers and officials of CRC or children's rights; and (8) lack of information about how much money government has budgeted for children.

122 See supra note 118.

123 For an overview of the UPR: UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Universal Periodic Review, at http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/UPR/Pages/UPRMain.aspx. For all of the reports and documents relevant to the 2014 UPR review of Albania: UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Universal Periodic Review - Albania, at http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/UPR/Pages/ALIndex.aspx.

124 In preparation for the UPR, a number of these children worked with several international NGOs to prepare a report and attended the UPR, presenting their evidence orally to a working session of the UPR.

125 Christopher Cuninghame & Elda Hallkaj, Child Rights Situation Analysis 2012–2015, Save the Children (2015)

126 Id. at 20.

127 The Persistent Power of Human Rights, supra note 86; Keck & Sikkink, supra note 58.

128 Interestingly, the positive impact of iterative deliberation involving civil society participation in the context of the human rights peer review system of the Universal Periodic Review has also been demonstrated in a recent study by Milewicz, Karolina & Goodin, Robert E, Deliberative Capacity-Building Through International Organizations: The Case of the Universal Periodic Review, 46 Brit. J. Pol. Sci. (2016)Google Scholar, which suggests that such processes are also taking place outside of the human rights treaty body system.

129 Liebowitz & Zwingel, supra note 108.

130 Lundy, Laura, Children's Rights and Educational Policy in Europe: The Implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, 38 Oxford Rev. Ed. 393, 407–08 (2012)Google Scholar.

131 See Byrnes & Freeman, The Impact of the CEDAW Convention: Paths to Equality, supra note 105.

132 See Posner, supra note 2, at 104 (“The reason human rights law has failed to improve respect for human rights is that the law is weak—the treaties are vague and inconsistent, and the institutions are balkanised, starved of resources, and unequipped with legal authority.”).

133 Id. at 142 (“International human rights law … reflects the same basic civilizing ideology combined with a top down mode of implementation… . It fails … to grapple with the huge variation among states and their extreme complexity.”).

134 See, for example, the argument made by Sherilyn Baxter that the Convention on the Rights of the Child is ineffective because it does not provide for effective enforcement of individual complaints: The Suggestions on the Rights of the Child: Why the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is a Twenty-Five year Failure, 2(1) J. Glob. Just. & Pol'y 89 (2015)Google Scholar.

135 See, for example, on the ICCPR, the arguments of Manfred Nowak, UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: CCPR Commentary 668 (2d ed. 2005)Google Scholar; and Scheinin, Martin, The Work of the Human Rights Committee Under the ICCPR and Its Optional Protocol, in Leading Cases of the Human Rights Committee 22 (Hanski, Raija & Scheinin, Martin eds., 1st ed. 2003)Google Scholar.

136 Martin Scheinin, Towards a World Court for Human Rights: Research Report Within the Framework of the Swiss Initiative to Commemorate the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Apr. 30, 2009), available at http://www.eui.eu/Documents/DepartmentsCentres/Law/Professors/Scheinin/WorldCourtReport30April2009.pdf (and forthcoming). For a response, see Philip Alston, Against a World Court for Human Rights, 28 Ethics & Int'l Aff. 197 (2014)Google Scholar.

137 Posner, supra note 2. For a more nuanced analysis, see Ulfstein, Geir, The Human Rights Treaty Bodies and Legitimacy Challenges, in Legitimacy and International Courts (Grossman, Nienke, Cohen, Harlan Grant, Follesdal, Andreas & Ulfstein, Geir eds., forthcoming in 2017)Google Scholar, available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2808013.

138 Scott, Joanne & Sturm, Susan, Courts as Catalysts: Re-thinking the Judicial Role in New Governance, 13 Colum. J. Euro. L. 565 (2006)Google Scholar.

139 Sabel & Simon, Destabilization Rights: How Public Law litigation succeeds, supra note 11.

140 See supra notes 136 and 137.

141 However, see Alston, supra note 136.

142 For examples of the horizontal interaction between treaty body processes and other international and regional processes and mechanisms, see Byrnes & Freeman, The Impact of the CEDAW Convention: Paths to Equality, supra note 105.

143 See however the argument of Guzman & Linos, Human Rights Backsliding, supra note 80. They argue that in advanced democracies with substantial domestic protection for human rights, governments sometimes cite the “minimum standards” set by international human rights courts as an argument to support their move to reduce some unpopular benefit (e.g. parental leave in Sweden), or to bolster their decision to change a particular rule of evidence (the nonadmissibility of purely hearsay evidence in the UK). See also Jason Mazzone, using the same example of hearsay evidence in The Rise and Fall of Human Rights, 3 Cambridge J. Int'l & Comp. L. 929 (2014)Google Scholar.

144 See supra note 1.

145 For an interesting challenge to the widely help assumption that the promotion of LGBT rights in African countries amounts to the top down imposition of a transnational set of values or to a form of international hegemony, see Ibrahim, Abadir M., LGBT Rights in Africa and the Discursive Role of International Human Rights Law, 15 Afr. Hum. Rts. L.J. 263–81 (2015)Google Scholar, who argues that political repression of gay rights and widespread homophobia in a range of African countries is largely a product of colonialism, and that many prior indigenous practices were in fact open to a variety of nonheterosexual or heternormative sexual preferences and practices.

146 See supra note 2. Compare the alternative account of César Rodriguez Garavito, who argues for an understanding of the human rights field as a complex and diverse ecosystem: The Future of Human Rights: From Gatekeeping to Symbiosis, 11 SUR: Int'l J. Hum. Rts. 499 (2014)Google Scholar.

147 Harriet Sherwood, Human Rights Groups Face Global Crackdown “Not Seen in a Generation,” Guardian (Aug. 26, 2015), at http://www.theguardian.com/law/2015/aug/26/ngos-face-restrictions-laws-human-rights-generation?CMP=share_btn_wa. See also the annual and regional reports on the space for civil society action published by CIVICUS (Oct. 26, 2016), at http://www.civicus.org/index.php/media-resources/reports-publications/2630-civic-space-in-europe-survey-report and http://www.civicus.org/images/CIVICUSMonitorFindingsReportOctober2016.pdf.

148 See, for example, the June 16, 2014 open letter written by “representatives of the major groups and stakeholders of civil society” who had been registered to participate in the UN “Open Working Group” on the SDGs, available at https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/10404openletter.pdf.

149 See Sustainable Development: Knowledge Platform, High-Level Political Forum (July 2017), at https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/hlpf/2015. For analysis of the resistance of states to an effective SDG accountability mechanism, see Donald, Kate & Way, Sally-Anne, Accountability for the Sustainable Development Goals: A Lost Opportunity?, 30 (2) Ethics & Int'l Aff. 201–13 (2016)Google Scholar.

150 See, for example, the Danish Institute for Human Rights’ mapping of the Sustainable Development Goals onto existing international human rights commitments: The Human Rights Guide to the Sustainable Development Goals, at http://sdg.humanrights.dk.

151 See Donald & Way, supra note 149.

152 See UN, Sustainable Development Goals, at http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals. For a fuller account see, Sustainable Development 2015, at http://www.sustainabledevelopment2015.org.

153 For some of the numerous recent moves to facilitate a role for civil society in this respect, see Sustainable Development 2015, Helping Stakeholders Shape New Global Goals for Humanity's Future (November 2015), at https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/9486ANilo%20Civil%20Society%20&%20Other%20Stakeholders.pdf. See also European Economic and Social Committee, Making Civil Society a Driving Force in the Implementation of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (Position Paper, Sept. 2015), at http://www.eesc.europa.eu/?i=portal.en.publications.36851; African Civil Society Circle, The Roles of Civil Society in Localising the Sustainable Development Goals (Position Paper, Mar. 2016)Google Scholar, available at http://www.gppi.net/fileadmin/user_upload/media/pub/2016/KAS_CSO_2016_Localizing_SDGs.pdf; Action for Sustainable Development, Learning by Doing: Civil Society Engagement in the High Level Political Forum's National Review Process (July 2016), available at http://www.civicus.org/images/CivilSociety.HLPF.NationalReviewProcess.pdf.

154 For some recent critical reflections on NGO activity in the field of human rights, see Cliquennois, Gaetan & Champetier, Brice, The Economic, Judicial and Political Influence Exerted by Private Foundations on Cases Taken by NGOs to the European Court of Human Rights: Inklings of a New Cold War?, 22 Euro. L.J. 92–128 (2016)Google Scholar, and McCrudden, Christopher, Transnational Culture Wars, 13 Int'l J. Const. L. 434–62 (2015)Google Scholar. In relation to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in particular, see Meyers, Stephen “NGO-ization and Human Rights Law: The CRPD's Civil Society Mandate,” 5 Laws 21 (2016)Google Scholar, available at http://www.mdpi.com/2075-471X/5/2/21.