Project description
Human rights in illiberal contexts
European, African, and inter-American human rights systems face challenges when dealing with non-democratic states, which undermine the international order and disregard fundamental rights. Traditional theories often link the effectiveness of regional courts to states’ compliance with rulings, but this perspective fails to account for illiberal states that may adhere to court decisions while still violating core human rights principles. The ERC-funded Beyond Compliance project studies the effectiveness of human rights regimes in non-democratic contexts, proposing that success hinges on maximising oversight and supporting domestic rights activists. By analysing the mechanisms at play in the inter-American and African, as well as the European regime, the project is developing a new theory that can provide valuable insights for the European system.
Objective
The European, African and inter-American human rights regimes seem not to be effective vis--vis non-democratic states. Besides undermining the international rule-based order, this situation has dire implications for human rights victims. Conventional theories, based on the experience of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), equate the effectiveness of regional courts with compliance. This perspective is inadequate to explain the status quo, where illiberal states may execute individual rulings while violating the underpinning norms. Scholarship on the Global South suggests that the experiences of the inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) and the African Court of Human and Peoples Rights (ACtHPR) offer an underexplored potential to increase our understanding, and a great potential to draw lessons for the European context, which is increasingly dealing with illiberal regimes. From a compliance perspective, the IACtHR and the ACtHPR have been hardly effective. Yet, if we take broader societal impact as an indicator, their experiences might indeed provide us with important insights. The project asks: What are the limitations and possibilities for human rights regimes to be effective in non-democratic contexts? It starts from the working assumption that regimes can only be effective if they make full use of their oversight powers (exhaustiveness) and empower domestic activists in their mobilization (responsiveness). It tests this view by analyzing how the three regimes have enforced their norms against states engaging in: 1) violence, 2) legal repression, and/or 3) rule of law violations. Based on case law analysis and interviews, it will develop an empirically based theory on effectiveness in three steps: 1) a historical analysis to identify the three regimes founding goals; 2) an empirical analysis of the extent to which they have adhered to these goals vis--vis illiberal states; 3) a normative framework on how they can enhance their effectiveness.
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2024-STG
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1012WX Amsterdam
Netherlands
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