Naming and shaming in UN treaty bodies: Individual petitions’ effect on human rights

Abstract

Can individual participation in international legal institutions affect state behavior? Much of the existing literature believes that international law has a limited effect in the countries where it’s needed the most, especially in the absence of enforcement mechanisms. Focused on repressive regimes, this paper analyzes petitions (complaints) filed by victims of human rights abuse in United Nations human rights treaty bodies. As a form of naming and shaming, I theorize that violation decisions– in which a monitoring body confirms a treaty violation– may improve human rights when paired with civil society organizations that publicize the decisions. Leveraging a new dataset, I find that governments improve respect for the most severe abuses involving bodily harm immediately after violation decisions. In support of the theory, these short-lived effects are driven by petitions where civil society actors are listed as representation. This work improves our understanding of the role of non-state actors in global politics and compliance with international institutions. International organizations can, under certain conditions, provide information on non-compliance that sufficiently pressures governments to change domestic practices and decrease repression.