Domestic Human Rights NGOs and International Human Rights Litigation

• In Event: Poster Session: New Avenues in Human Rights Research & South Asian Politics
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: New Avenues in Human Rights Research

Abstract

Domestic Human Rights NGOs in autocratic regimes take on a variety of roles, including educating victims of political violence on the existence of human rights and their violation, connecting victims to networks of domestic and international Human Rights NGOs, and assisting victims in their attempt to lodge complaints with the domestic court system in their attempt to seek compensation for the violations they suffered. Despite previous research highlighting the crucial role Human Rights NGOs play in supporting victims of political violence in autocratic regimes, there is a dearth of research on whether domestic Human Rights NGOs support victims when attempting to file individual communications with the UN Treaty Bodies after having exhausted domestic remedies. Do domestic Human Rights NGOs educate victims of political violence in autocratic regimes on filing individual communications after large-scale political violence, and does the number of domestic Human Rights NGOs influence the number of victims who file individual communications and gain access to international litigation? This project begins to answer this question by exploring the relationship between the number of domestic Human Rights NGOs and the number of individual communications after incidents of large-scale violence in autocratic regimes. This project advances our understanding of the role domestic Human Rights NGOs play in supporting victims of political violence in international human rights litigation.

Author

• Dagmar Heintze, University of Texas at Dallas