International System of Protection

PowerPoint Presentation created by the Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights. This presentation is used by the Office in their training sessions. It addresses the Inter-American human rights system, explains the mandate of the Office of the Special Rapporteur, and refers to the jurisprudence and standards on: prohibition of prior censorship, prohibition of desacato laws, proportionality of subsequent liability, prohibition of indirect restrictions on speech, access to information and violence against media workers. .

Social protest is recognized and protected as intrinsic to the existence and consolidation of democracies by the inter-American system of human rights. As per the instruments of the inter-American system, the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, and association guarantee and protect individual and collective forms of public expression of opinions, dissent, demand for compliance with human rights, and affirmation of the historically marginalized groups in society. Despite such recognition, the region continues to repress and limit the exercise of these rights in the public sphere, due to the notion of citizen mobilization being disruptive for public order or a threat to the stability of democratic institutions. The objective of this report, therefore, is to “contribute to a better understanding of State obligations aimed at guaranteeing, protecting, and facilitating public protests and demonstrations, as well as the standards that should frame the progressive use of force—and as a last resort—in protest contexts”. The report discusses: guiding principles, applicable legal framework, obligation to respect rights, obligation to protect and facilitate, obligation to guarantee rights, protests and the internet, access to information, states of emergency, and conclusions and recommendations. 

Chapter 12 of Human Rights in the Administration of Justice, a manual and facilitator’s guide developed by the UN OHCHR in collaboration with the IBA, pertains to the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, opinion, expression, association and assembly. The learning objectives of this chapter are: “1.) To familiarize the participants with some other key rights, namely freedom of thought, conscience, religion, opinion, expression, association and assembly, and their importance in a society that is respectful of human rights in general; 2.) To illustrate how these freedoms, as well as the limitations attached to the exercise of most of them, are interpreted by the international monitoring bodies; 3.) To explain the role of judges, prosecutors and lawyers in safeguarding the freedoms dealt with in this chapter.”

In this segment of the MOOC 'Freedom of Expression in the Age of Globalization' created by Columbia Global Freedom of Expression, Agnès Callamard focuses on the system of protection of freedom of expression in the Americas, South, Central, and North America. Callamard reviews the circumstances of its establishment, the specificities of the protection system, and the institution that are insuring the implementation of the commitment to freedom of expression. Callamard explains that the Inter-American system has probably become the most effective system of protection for freedom of expression, both in theory and in practice.

"Thee inter- American system of human rights (IASHR) is one of the three regional human rights systems, together with the European and the African systems. This contribution aims to offer a general overview of its structure and functions in order to understand the tools that have been used by the system to contribute toward its transformative role in the region. The IASHR has both a legal and an institutional dimension, in addition to a systemic one, and the sections of this contribution respect this tripartite division."

"This article examines the ‘Joint Declarations on freedom of expression’ from a critical perspective. Since 1999, these Joint Declarations have been adopted annually by the four intergovernmental mechanisms on freedom of expression with the assistance of two non-governmental organisations. This article identifies the factors which contribute to the Joint Declarations’ value, with a specific focus on the collaborative process leading up to their adoption, their progressive content and their demonstrated influence upon courts and other actors. It also acknowledges the limitations of the texts, including their non-binding nature as soft law, their limited impact and lack of visibility. Notwithstanding these issues, this article contends that the Joint Declarations constitute a distinct and potentially influential body of international soft law on freedom of expression, one whose relevance to policy debates deserves broader recognition."