Treaty Body Litigation Initiative

In 2021 the Clinic launched the Treaty Body Litigation Initiative to bring or support individual claims before the key monitoring bodies of the UN system, to seek meaningful redress for victims of digital rights violations, and advocate for a rights-respecting jurisprudence touching on some of the most important issues of human rights in the digital age. Today’s treaty body jurisprudence is in its earliest phase of development. This project aim to help develop that jurisprudence through strategic use of the individual complaints procedures, collaborating especially (though not solely) with civil society actors in national environments least likely to provide remedies that meet international standards.

Despite the significance of the treaty body system, civil society organizations have not devoted a broad and sustained effort to help shape its jurisprudence with an eye to reinforcing the past decade of innovations in digital rights by the UN’s political bodies. NGOs around the complex UN human rights system have focused, with good reason, on advocacy before bodies such as the Human Rights Council and its Special Procedures and Universal Periodic Review, to great benefit for digital rights. Others have focused on the regional systems, using the progressive stands taken by UN actors to formulate, negotiate and advocate for new or strengthened norms within the European, African and Inter-American systems. The Treaty Body Litigation Initiative aims to work with partners globally, especially in the Global South, to identify cases ripe for treaty body consideration and most likely to advance the jurisprudence of digital rights.

This project is lead by Clinic Director David Kaye and Hinako Sugiyama.

Recent updates related to this area of focus can be found here.