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

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

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.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union