Human Rights and Strategic Litigation: Towards a Transformation of International Standards
In commemoration of International Human Rights Day, Race and Equality offers a comprehensive look at four cases that are being litigated before the Inter-American Human Rights System. Washington, DC; December […]
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In commemoration of International Human Rights Day, Race and Equality offers a comprehensive look at four cases that are being litigated before the Inter-American Human Rights System.
Washington, DC; December 10, 2024.– In the process of promoting and defending human rights, strategic litigation represents a key front of the struggle. For this reason, it is one of the four pillars of work for the Institute on Race, Equality and Human Rights (Race and Equality).
With the idea that access to justice is fundamental to guarantee and protect human rights, Race and Equality litigates alongside victims and allied organizations, before human rights mechanisms at the Inter-American and universal levels, carrying out this work in two ways.
There is the emergency legal response, which is activated when counterparts face risks of violation of their human rights, and the Race and Equality Legal Team supports them in the documentation and timely submission of requests for protection and intervention before the Inter-American System and/or the Universal System.
Litigating before the IAHRS
To achieve comprehensive justice for victims and promote long-term, sustainable, and structural changes for greater protection of human rights, Race and Equality also conducts strategic litigation through constant coordination with civil society counterparts.
In commemoration of the International Day of Human Rights, Race and Equality presents four cases that are currently being litigating before the Inter-American Human Rights System (IAHRS), offering a comprehensive look at the facts of each case, their procedural status and, in collaboration with victims, relatives, and allied organizations, what we seek in terms of jurisprudence and transformation of international standards.
Race and Equality is currently litigating before the IAHRS 10 cases (3 vs. Nicaragua, 2 vs. Colombia, 3 vs. Cuba, 1 vs. Peru, and 1 vs. Mexico), for violation of human rights of 157 individual victims and three collective victims); each case is in a different procedural status. In 31 cases we seek protection before the Universal System and the IAHRS (13 from Nicaragua, 3 from Colombia, 14 from Cuba, and 1 from Brazil), in favor of 401 individual beneficiaries and two collective beneficiaries. The people and groups represented belong to the populations with whom the organization has worked since its inception: Afro-descendants, Indigenous people, LGBTI+ people, women community leaders, human rights defenders, and victims of political repression.
In addition, in compliance with the institutional vision of Race and Equality, the cases are approached from an intersectional perspective.
It is important to mention that the work of strategic litigation is intertwined and reinforced by the other pillars of the work of Race and Equality, which are advocacy, documentation, and strengthening the capacities of counterparts. Learn more here.
- Petition of the Ladies in White (Cuba): Comprehensive Protection of the Right to Defend Human Rights
For their work in defense and promotion of human rights in Cuba, the Ladies in White are continuously threatened, harassed, persecuted, and repressed by state agents and are detained every week for hours or days, some of them being in arbitrary detention for political reasons. During the last few weeks, its President, Ms. Berta Soler, has been detained and forcibly disappeared on three occasions for almost 3 days. In 2013, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) granted precautionary measures in favor of all the members of the organization, which are still in force; and in 2022 Race and Equality filed a petition for the human rights violations caused to the women who make up the Ladies in White and to the organization itself.
Currently, the deadline for the State to submit its observations on admissibility and merits is running, and the IACHR will subsequently be able to rule on the State’s international responsibility in this case.
Through the precautionary measures, a letter of allegation before the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council, and actions before other United Nations bodies, Race and Equality seeks to guarantee the protection of the rights to life, personal integrity, personal liberty, freedom of thought and expression, to association, and to exercise the right to defend human rights and freedom of expression.
The petition alleges that the State of Cuba is internationally responsible for the violation of the rights to life, liberty, security, and integrity of the person, equality before the law, protection of honor, the constitution and protection of the family, the preservation of health and well-being, and protection against arbitrary detention for political reasons to the detriment of victims.
- Petition of Kevin Solís (Nicaragua): Protection of Human Rights Defenders as Key Actors for the Strengthening of Democracy
The case of Kevin Solís is an example of the pattern of repression suffered by students who denounced human rights violations during the 2018 social unrest in Nicaragua. Between 2018 and 2020 he was deprived of his liberty on two occasions, being a victim of torture and punishment in prison, in addition to his academic records from the public university being destroyed. On February 9, 2023, Kevin Solís was released from prison, exiled to the United States, and stripped of his nationality.
Given the risk of the situation faced by Solís, the IACHR granted him precautionary measures and he was later the beneficiary of provisional measures ordered by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR). In August 2023, Race and Equality filed a petition with the IACtHR denouncing the human rights violations committed by the State against it. The provisional measures are in force, while the petition is awaiting processing by the IACtHR.
With the strategy used in this case, we seek to protect human rights defenders as key actors in strengthening democracy, as well as to denounce arbitrary detentions through the use of legislation contrary to international standards to criminalize freedom of expression. This case will also contribute to the documentation of the human rights violations that have occurred since the beginning of the crisis for a) pressure from the international community and b) subsequent accountability, reparation, and the establishment of guarantees of non-repetition.
- Precautionary Measures of Benny Briolly (Brazil): Guarantee for the Political Participation of Black People with Diverse Gender Identities
Benny Briolly Rosa da Silva Santos is a black travesti councilor elected in the City of Niterói, who was reelected in 2024 and who, from 2017 to date, faces a serious situation of attacks aimed at her gender identity and race, also affecting her advisory team. Such attacks, which are manifested through discriminatory content and death threats against them, were frequently used to provoke fear and insecurity in their political actions in defense of human rights. Faced with this situation, the organizations Criola, Terra de Direitos, Justiça Global, Instituto Marielle Franco, Instituto de Defesa da População Negra, and Race and Equality, requested precautionary measures before the IACHR, which were granted on June 11, 2022.
The organizations representing the beneficiary have sought the permanent implementation of precautionary measures and to put an end to the risks faced by Briolly and her team, without fully achieving it so far, since the State has not carried out the appropriate and timely actions to do so.
With the other representative organizations, we seek the effective protection of the Councilor and that the State of Brazil guarantees the political participation of black people with diverse gender identities.
- La COMADRE (Colombia): Right to Collective Reparation for Women Ethnic Leaders
Community leaders of the Coordination of Displaced Afro-Colombian Women in Resistance (La COMADRE), an autonomous organization of women victims of the armed conflict who have been victims of sexual violence and forced displacement, continue to face multiple forms of violence due to their leadership. These are mainly people who belong to rural ethnic communities, who have been forcibly displaced in urban contexts in the face of the armed conflict and violence that persists in their ancestral territories.
In this context, La COMADRE demanded that the State of Colombia be recognized as an ethnic collective subject with the right to collective reparation through free, prior, and informed consultation. Despite having achieved this recognition, it has not been granted such reparation, so together with the Association of Displaced Afro-Colombians (AFRODES), ILEX Legal Action, Race and Equality presented in 2022 a petition to the IACHR against the violations perpetrated against the organization by the State and the violence and risks that the women leaders who make up the organization continue to face. The petition was opened for processing and is awaiting the IACHR in the admissibility and merits stages.
This case seeks, first, that collective reparation be granted to La COMADRE as an ethnic collective subject, after exercising the right to consultation to determine such reparation; guarantees for the cessation of violence and risks faced by Afro-Colombian women leaders who are victims of the armed conflict, as well as identification and punishment of those responsible and structural changes to ensure that Afro-Colombian women can defend their human rights by exercising their leadership in conditions of safety for themselves, their families, and their organization.
