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Human rights institutions are facing unprecedented pressures ranging from threats of non-compliance, denunciation, and backlash that has gone as far as the imposition of sanctions against the ICC. In Latin America, the threat may come from the dramatic rise of far-right governments, many of which have adopted adversarial stances toward the Inter-American Human Rights System as part of their platforms. Although social movements from conservative ideological camps are often aligned with these frequently autocratic-leaning governments, a surprising trend is emerging. Rather than simply avoiding or pushing states to withdraw from regional human rights institutions, these groups are increasingly choosing to engage with them from the inside.
Join us for a conversation with Jorge Contesse, who will explore the rise of moral conservative engagement with the Inter-American Human Rights System and its profound implications for the future of human rights advocacy. He will argue that, instead of an end times of human rights, where they would be dismantled by successive waves of attacks from authoritarian, left- and right-wing populist, and conservative actors, current developments within the regional system can be best understood as a reconfiguration of the constituencies that engage with the region’s human rights law and institutions. He will discuss how strategic conservative engagement with the human rights system may impose a significant cost on the progressive development of human rights in the region while also, ironically, helping the regional system survive Latin America’s recent “revolution to the right.”
Speakers
Jorge Contesse is a Professor of Law & Director at the Center for Transnational Law at Rutgers University. He has been a member of the United Nations Committee against Torture since 2023. His work focuses on the judicialization of international law and on the interaction between domestic constitutional actors and international human rights regimes, particularly in Latin America.
Gerald Neuman (moderator) is the Director of Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Program, and the J. Sinclair Armstrong Professor of International, Foreign, and Comparative Law at HLS. Neuman teaches courses in international human rights law, immigration and nationality law, and U.S. constitutional law. From 2011 to 2014, he served as a Member of the UN Human Rights Committee. Neuman holds a JD from HLS and a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
This event is co-sponsored by The Program on Law and Society in the Muslim World, The David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, HLS Advocates for Human Rights, and The Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School.