Embassies can play a critical role in maximising the impact of the decisions of human rights bodies, a new White Paper suggests.
Co-authored by UNSW Law & Justice Professor and Australian Human Rights Institute Associate Lucas Lixinski and Professor of International Law at the Federal University of Minas Gerais Lucas Carlos Lima, the White Paper looks at the under-appreciated and often invisible roles of embassies and diplomats.
“Embassies are eminently political parts of the state, and international human rights bodies rely on their independence for their legitimacy,” Professor Lixinski explained.
The White Paper relies on interviews with a series of key operators in Latin America, around the jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. But its lessons go far beyond.
Professor Lima said Latin America is a great laboratory because the Inter-American Court is in San José, the capital of Costa Rica.
“Embassies there are primarily the bilateral representation to Costa Rica, but also end up dealing with the Court as an independent international body. We wanted to look into that mixed role”, he said.
Professor Lixinski said that while that combination is unique, most countries also have diplomatic representations that connect in that capacity to highly technical human rights bodies that often seek to stay separate from politics.
“In the United Nations human rights ecosystem in Geneva, for instance, we have both technical bodies like the Committee on the Rights of the Child, and more political bodies like the Human Rights Council,” he said.
“How does the relationship of diplomats to those bodies work when the diplomats are effectively part of the same diplomatic post representing their state’s interests?”
Navigating this tension is important, the White Paper suggests. It also informs how cooperative states are when it comes to the decisions of these bodies.
“One of our most surprising findings with these interviews is how cooperative states want to be with the Court,” Lima said.
“We tend to think of human rights as something that states resist – which is why they violate it – but, in fact, the diplomats with whom we spoke were all very eager to do more, and cooperate more closely with the Court.”
The authors want readers of the White Paper to understand that not only do diplomatic posts want to help, but also that they are much more than just a post office to filter communications between their national capitals and the Court.
“It is also important that we see embassies as repositories of institutional memory, places where great expertise can be developed, and places where international human rights institutions can learn pathways to make their work even more impactful,” Lima said.
The White Paper suggests that embassies consider having specialised personnel dedicated to relationships with the Court, as well as sharing of best practices on how to improve human rights records among diplomats of different countries.
“Another important thing that came out of our interviews is that embassies can be really important windows into the countries that human rights bodies seek to transform through the language of human rights,” Lixinski said.
“When we hear a human rights case, we usually get the worst of the country. Embassies can help us see the best of the country as well, and get a real insight into the overall population that human rights cases seek to ultimately help, and the society human rights wants to transform for the better.”
To do so, Lima and Lixinski suggest we need to remember that embassies are very well-adept at being cultural agents, and that, ultimately, human rights law is not just about chastising bad states, it is about helping a people achieve their best.
“It is also important that we remember that human rights bodies do not exist just in one place anymore; they’re everywhere. So, we need to encourage more dialogue among states when it comes to what they do not just in San José, but also in Washington, the home of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and Geneva, where the United Nations bodies are,” urged Lima.
“The White Paper seeks to open a genuine dialogue among diplomats and human rights bodies, moving past that assumption that states are stubborn enemies of human rights. Next, we want to expand this project to also look at dynamics in Geneva and beyond, where we can really test the possibilities of diplomatic engagement for human rights around the entire world.”