Examining the Evolving Steering Role of NGOs on the case law of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights

Project Information

NGOsteerIACtHR

Grant agreement ID: 101111487

DOI

10.3030/101111487

Project closed

EC signature date 12 April 2023

Start date 1 October 2023

End date 30 September 2025

Funded under

• Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 191 760,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITEIT GENT
Belgium

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - NGOsteerIACtHR (Examining the Evolving Steering Role of NGOs on the case law of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights)

Reporting period: 2023-10-01 to 2025-09-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Scholars and several judges of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) have increasingly emphasized on the importance of civil society for this regional Court. In line with this proposition, one might assume that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) could set the IACtHR's normative agenda through litigation strategies and third-party interventions, thereby constantly (re)shaping its case law. However, most studies of the IACtHR focus primarily on the normative innovations made by its judiciary, leaving this normative claim without empirical verification.

Against this background, the NGOsteerIACtHR project aims to develop and apply an analytically and empirically grounded framework to examine the influence of the agenda-setting power of NGOs on the IACtHR's norm interpretation in connection with environmental matters. It pursues to create a baseline framework that will encourage human rights researchers, regardless of their level of expertise, to engage in the empirical study of the factors and processes through which legal mobilization influences the IACtHR. Consequently, it will initially close research gaps that are caused by a lack of empirical evidence and methodology.

Upon its completion, the project findings will be shared with the legal clinics that intervened as amicus curiae in Advisory Opinion No. 23 on the Environment and Human Rights (AO No. 23) as well as the Advisory Opinion No 32 on the Climate Emergency and Human Rights (AO No. 32), since these actors fall within the project's definition of NGOs. This will ensure that the results are used by a wide community of researchers in different geographical areas, given that AO No. 32 attracted a considerable number of third-party interventions from legal clinics based in Europe and beyond. At the end, this project will foster that these clinics introduce their students in the empirical analysis of the legal mobilization phenomenon before international (and even domestic) courts, and collaborate to promote continuous methodological exchange and joint publications.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Grounded in the theory of sociology of law and legal doctrinal scholarship, the NGOsteerIACtHR project has developed a two-tier analytical framework for the empirical study of the drivers and processes through which NGOs influence norm interpretation by the IACtHR.

Tier 1 develops an empirical analysis of whether and why NGOs normatively steer this regional Court's jurisprudence, from the perspective of both NGOs and its judges. Conversely, Tier 2 briefly discusses the data analysis method deemed suitable by the project for exploring how legal mobilization has shaped the IACtHR's environmental jurisprudence over time.

To explore these questions, the project begins with the premise that NGOs can persuade the IACtHR to revise its interpretation of norms if their argumentative actions are embedded in a normative structure in which the IACtHR's interpretation of norms is also embedded. However, the effectiveness of these strategies may be hindered if the motivations of the IACtHR’s judges conflict with the NGOs' goals.

As a result, the project provides an empirical study of selected case studies alongside an analytical proposal.

EMPIRICAL STUDY
The project favours a case study approach to the qualitative analysis of three case studies:
1) Comunidad Indígena Maya Q'eqchi' Agua Caliente v Guatemala
2) Escaleras Mejia and Others v Honduras
3) AO No. 23

For the project, influence is defined as the ability of NGOs to persuade the IACtHR to adopt their interpretation of a norm within the context of a specific case.
In line with the contextual connotations of the term, each case study conducted a textual analysis of the relevant data to determine which factors, if any, influenced the IACtHR's jurisprudential innovation under review.
The following areas of innovation were explored: Case -1: The IACtHR’s understanding of the environmental impact assessment (EIA) as a safeguard to guarantee indigenous peoples' access to information under Article 13 in contentious proceedings (in addition to its traditional treatment as a safeguard for indigenous peoples' survival under Article 21 of the Convention); Case-2: The IACtHR’s determination of the scope of the right to defend human rights as protected by different Convention's norms; Case-3: The IACtHR’s recognition of the right to a healthy environment (R2HE) through an obiter dictum.

ANALYTICAL PROPOSAL:
Informed by these empirical findings, the project proceeds to conduct a critical analysis and examination of the literature on the concept of judicial legal consciousness and the citation network analysis. The aim is to propose these as conceptual tools and empirical methods to advance the empirical study of influence drivers from a judicial perspective, as well as influence processes from a multi-stakeholder and institutional perspective.

In summary, the project has preliminarily filled an empirical research gap, as the textual analysis of case studies provides initial evidence of the factors influencing this legal phenomenon. Furthermore, integrating this concept and data analysis method into the empirical assessment has great potential to address a methodological research gap, as it may generate new insights into the driving forces and processes involved.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The project's research output consists of two articles: an empirical study and an analytical proposal (article-1), and a methodological research article (article-2). The latter constitutes the training material that the project uses to introduce legal clinic (students) to the empirical analysis of the normative influence of their own amicus briefs on the IACtHR.

To this end, the project intends to organize online sessions with directors of legal clinics who are interested in this training offer. The first sessions will introduce the findings of article-1 and the methodological guidance for replicating the case study analysis of article-1 with students as outlined in article-2. These introductory sessions will be conducted in Spanish and English. Subsequently, the next sessions will discuss the applied methodology for each case. At the end of the final session, the project will propose using the submissions they made in the context of AO Nos. 23 and 32 as case studies. This could lead to engagement in further collaboration through methodological exchange and joint publications.

While facilitating the empirical study of their influence and that of their peers on the IACtHR, exploiting the results of the project will also enhance similar analyses of their legal mobilization before domestic courts.

Furthermore, the project has another scientific impact in that it enables the development of a more comprehensive analytical tool for empirically exploring the normative influence of other non-state actors on the IACtHR, as well as facilitating the study of legal mobilization in any subject matter domain addressed by the IACtHR. This will, in turn, arguably foster the empirical study of influence practices in other universal and regional human rights systems, and allow for comparisons to be made across international human rights bodies.

Finally, the societal impact resulting from this scientific research will provide relevant information to various civil society organizations (both within and outside the Americas), enabling them to enhance their litigation strategies and written submissions to this regional Court.

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