From Compliance to Impact: Assessing the Effectiveness of Strategic Litigation in Cases of Forced Disappearance at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights [Article]

Abstract

Thousands of victims of human rights violations in Latin America bring their cases to the Inter-American System of Human Rights (IASHR), hoping for justice after all alternatives in their countries failed them. However, in recent years, data showing low compliance with IASHR decisions has triggered questions on the effectiveness of the Court in achieving social change through transformative remedies. Against this criticism, recent scholarship argues that civil society organizations continue to pursue strategic litigation at the IASHR for its capacity to generate an impact despite apparently low compliance. However, authors arguing in favor of an impact perspective have scarcely provided answers on how to define, understand, or describe impact. To fill this gap, I present a normative, empirical, and historical analysis of the impact achieved by civil society-led strategic litigation on forced disappearance in Peru, Guatemala, and Colombia, the three countries comprising 53% percent of cases of forced disappearance that have reached the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. I arrive at three main conclusions. First, an impact analysis presents a far more nuanced outlook of the effectiveness of the IASHR that reveals the effects of the IASHR that traditionally compliance-focused research hides. Second, civil society-led strategic litigation in cases of forced disappearance in Peru, Guatemala, and Colombia has produced an impact at the individual, social, and institutional levels. The Article concludes with the general recommendation of shifting toward an impact approach to assess the effectiveness of the IASHR.