This Article considers how the ranking of states, as perpetuated by the international legal order, may play a role in the considerations of those targeted by global naming and shaming campaigns. To do so, it examines Qatar’s response to being shamed in the lead up to and during the 2022 FIFA Men’s World Cup. Drawing from international relations literature on status and adopting a critical approach to unpack the prevalence of the hierarchal structuring of states in the contemporary international legal order, the Article claims that the practice of shaming, as a human rights enforcement strategy, inevitably pushes target states to question their status within the international legal community. This could, counterproductively, lead to negative outcomes for the rights of the very individuals these campaigns seek to protect. Furthermore, the Article sketches out a theoretical argument for why certain states may consider the enactment of cosmetic legal reforms to be an attractive strategy for countering a global shaming campaign.
