American Convention on Human Rights

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What’s at Stake in the Abortion Case Before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights?

March 16, 2023

El Salvador’s punitive treatment of women through its absolute criminalization of abortion will come under scrutiny by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (the “Court”) on March 22-23, in a case involving the state’s treatment of a woman in need of a life-saving abortion. Beatriz was a young woman from the impoverished state of Usulután, who, after experiencing a pregnancy fraught with complications due to an autoimmune disease, found herself pregnant a second time. Despite medical consensus of the lack of viability of the anencephalic fetus and the harm to Beatriz if the pregnancy continued, Beatriz was forced to wait in physical and mental anguish for months while the hospital decided whether to let her doctors perform a therapeutic abortion, separated from her family and young son while in fear of dying or suffering irreparable health damage. This case follows the Court’s 2021 judgment in Manuela v. El Salvador, which documented the negative consequences of the abortion ban on impoverished women and girls. However, in Manuela the Court…

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Another Advisory Opinion on the Climate Emergency? The Added Value of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights

March 2, 2023

The highest human rights tribunal in the Americas, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR), sits in Costa Rica’s capital San Jose, part of a region significantly exposed and vulnerable to climate impacts. If the global temperature continues to rise due to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that remain trapped in the atmosphere, enjoying the whole…

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Nicaragua: Expatriation as an Aggravated Form of Political Persecution

February 27, 2023

In an unprecedented move in the modern history of international law, Nicaragua has stripped more than 300 dissident citizens of their nationality in the last two weeks. 222 of these citizens were deported to the United States on 9 February (see here), with the Managua Appeals Court (Tribunal de Apelaciones) removing their nationality the day…

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The Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the Quest for Equality: The Fireworks Factory case

January 20, 2021

On 26 October 2020, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) published its judgment in the Case of the Workers of the Fireworks Factory in Santo Antônio de Jesus and their Families v. Brazil (Fireworks Factory case). The dispute concerned the Brazilian state's responsibility for the events surrounding an explosion in a fireworks factory in the…

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The Lhaka Honhat Case Of The Inter-American Court Of Human Rights: The Long-Awaited Granting Of 400,000 Hectares Under Communal Property Rights

July 16, 2020

On 6 February 2020, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (the Court) delivered a judgment in which it declared the international responsibility of the Argentine Republic for the violation of diverse rights of 132 indigenous communities of the Salta province, organised under the Lhaka Honhat Association. This is the first time the Court has condemned…

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