Unit 4: Regional Arrangements for Human Rights Protection
4.1 European System
The world’s strongest system: the European Convention on Human Rights 1950 (the Council of Europe’s crown) with its Court (ECtHR) — the individual’s direct access to an international court (the revolutionary design); the binding judgments (Art 46 — the execution supervision by the Committee of Ministers); the Protocols’ expanding catalogue (the property, election, and fair-trial rights — Protocols 1, 4, 6, 7, 12, 13); the margin of appreciation doctrine (the Court’s deference calculus); the reform debates (the caseload — the Protocol 11 and 14 reforms; the Brighton process; the withdrawal politics — the Brexit-era echoes). Beside: the European Social Charter 1961 (the revised 1996 version; the collective complaints); the CPT (the torture-prevention visits); the Framework Convention for National Minorities. The lesson: judicialised protection at scale — the model the other systems measure themselves against.
4.2 Inter-American System
The hemisphere’s system: the American Convention on Human Rights 1969 (Pact of San Jose); the Inter-American Commission (the OAS organ — the petitions, the country reports, the precautionary measures) and the Inter-American Court (the contentious and advisory jurisdiction — the state-acceptance requirement); the jurisprudence’s fame (the forced disappearances’ line — the Velasquez Rodriguez case’s seminal holding that state acquiescence in disappearances violates multiple rights; the amnesty’s invalidation line — the Barrios Altos case; the indigenous-lands doctrine — the Awas Tingni case); the democratic-clause interface (the Inter-American Democratic Charter — the OAS course’s cross-reference). The system’s critics: the compliance gaps; the withdrawal episodes (the Trinidad, Venezuela and Dominican Republic exits’ lore).
4.3 African System
The continental line: the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights 1981 (the Banjul Charter) — the peoples’ rights’ pioneer (the generations united in one instrument); the African Commission (the promotional-and-protective mandates; the communications procedure; the special rapporteurs’ own family); the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights
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