Struggles within the Human Rights Field: The Matter of Real and Supposed Competing Narratives

The ICCAL project builds, in large part, on inter-American human rights treaties and their application and interpretation by the main regional human rights organs: the Commission and the Court. Thus, an important part of the critique raised against this project is directed toward the activities of such institutions. In this intervention I will break down some of the points of critique, namely: the nature and extent of anti-state bias on behalf of the Commission and Court (i); the characteristics of resistance and backlash within the inter-American system (ii); supposed lack of responsiveness of the system’s organs toward state contestation; and (iii) how this purportedly has contributed to the challenges faced by the regional human rights system.