Regional Protection and Institutions
Regional systems of international human rights law supplement and complement national and international human rights law by protecting and promoting human rights in specific areas of the world. There are three key regional human rights instruments which have established human rights law on a regional basis. These are:
- the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights for Africa (1981, in force since 1986)
- the American Convention on Human Rights for the Americas (1969, in force since 1978)
- the European Convention on Human Rights for Europe (1950, in force since 1953)
Organization of American States and Council of Europe, like UN, have also adopted (but, unlike UN, later) separate treaties (with weaker implementation mechanisms) containing catalogues of economic, social and cultural rights, as opposed to their aforementioned conventions dealing mostly with civil and political rights.
- European Social Charter for Europe (1961, in force since 1965, complaints mechanism created under 1995 Additional Protocol, in force since 1998)
- Protocol of San Salvador to the ACHR for the Americas (1988, in force since 1999)
Read more about this topic: International Human Rights Law
Famous quotes containing the words protection and/or institutions:
“Is a Bill of Rights a security for [religious liberty]? If there were but one sect in America, a Bill of Rights would be a small protection for liberty.... Freedom derives from a multiplicity of sects, which pervade America, and which is the best and only security for religious liberty in any society. For where there is such a variety of sects, there cannot be a majority of any one sect to oppress and persecute the rest.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“In my short experience of human life, the outward obstacles, if there were any such, have not been living men, but the institutions of the dead.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)