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Regional instruments
An alternative to using the global documents is to take as an outset the
general regional human rights conventions, at present the European Convention
on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the Inter-American
Convention on Human Rights, and the African Charter on Human and
Peoples’ Rights, all of which are supplemented by instruments in particular
areas. As with the global instruments, they are also subject to the process of
ratification and bind only state parties, which is less of an issue now because
of the almost universal ratification within the respective jurisdictions. This
of course does not apply to those regions not covered by any regional instruments,
most notably Central, East and South East Asia and the Pacific,
where the choice is still limited to either the global or domestic instruments.
These instruments are not in their fundamental nature universal, even
though they each reflect most of the same human rights standards and principles,
and so their use as a basis for the aid and human rights dialogue
means that either party must be willing to depart from its own indigenous
basis and operate on what may be ‘foreign ground’. However, when we use
the standards as a basis for determining the status of human rights in a particular
country, it should be obvious that the legitimate basis of such analysis
should be the instrument applying to that particular region, rather than
that of the other party. To put it in simple terms, when donor country representatives
from Western Europe take, tacitly or even explicitly, as the outset
for judging other countries’ human rights (even to the extent of aid
conditionality) the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental
Freedoms, they must expect to be rightfully met with criticism and
rejection, i.e. this is hardly a good starting point for dialogue. For those
professionally engaged in this type of work, however, it can be a worthwhile
exercise to learn about the extent of the human rights obligations
incurred by another State Party through regional human rights arrangements,
e.g. learn whether an African state has ratified the African Charter as well as
the OAU (now AU) specialized conventions relating to children and refugees,
and to bring those to the negotiating table. When it comes to using
these standards in a more proactive manner, their obvious strength is that
they negate the argument so often presented in relation to the global instruments
that they do not correspond to or take into account the context,
history, cultures or other key ‘flavours’ of a particular region. In other words,
using the regional instruments as a basis for dialogue requires more negotiation,
and a learning process and willingness not to stand on one’s own on
the behalf of both parties.