Highlight 53/2022 – The League of Arab States and human rights protection
Iba’a Hamida, 21 December 2022
The League of Arab States has drawn interest from both the world community and residents of Arab countries in recent years. Many believe it is ready to take on a crucial role in global diplomacy on matters like safety, security, and human rights in Arab countries. This function hasn’t been consistently carried out or motivated by a sincere concern for human rights up until now.
However, a closer look at the Arab League throughout the most recent regional crises suggests a gradual shift in its conduct. Although the League has made significant advancements in the area of human rights, including adopting the updated Arab Charter on Human Rights in 2004 (which went into effect in 2008), the charter is not entirely compliant with international law.
For instance, the Charter cedes control over a number of crucial rights to national laws, placing it in a situation where it is in contradiction with international law. A good example of this is article 7(1), which enables the death sentence to be applied to minors if national law permits it, but it also states that « sentences of death must not be inflicted on anyone under the age of 18 unless otherwise provided for in the laws in place at the time of the commission of the crime ». While on the contrary, children under 18 when the crime was committed may never be sentenced to death under international or other regional law.
On the other hand, the Arab Human Rights Committee has been able to draw attention to member states’ accomplishments as well as their inadequacies in human rights law and practice through its evaluation of states reports. In theory, the establishment of the Arab Court of Human Rights, which was authorized by the Arab League Summit in March 2014, can be seen as a positive development to fill the gap of a lack of an enforcement mechanism for the charter, even though the statue of the court poses serious issues, such as the absence of the access to the court for individual victims of human rights abuses. Rather, a case must be brought by a member state, which limits the jurisdiction of the proposed court to interstate cases.
With these advances, the Arab League still needs to take tremendous steps to ensure that human rights are at the center of all of its projects, programs, and decisions. Ensuring that the League’s human rights standards are compliant with international law is essential to the growth of human rights. The Arab League must also become a transparent organization, and open itself to the contribution that civil society organizations can offer. To implement true consultation, this will necessitate a restructuring of its own processes. Arab League reform in the areas of governance and transparency will guarantee that it develops into a genuinely democratic body capable of leading change in Arab countries.
Iba’a Hamida, Highlight 53/2022 – The League of Arab States and human rights protection, 21 December 2022, available at www.meig.ch
The views expressed in the MEIG Highlights are personal to the author and neither reflect the positions of the MEIG Programme nor those of the University of Geneva.