Making International Human Rights Protection More Effective:
A Rational-Choice Approach to the Effectiveness of
Ius Standi Provisions
Anne van Aaken1
Empirical research shows that international human rights law is to a large extent ineffective. In-
dividual complaint mechanisms are the only significantly effective enforcement mechanism.
Certainly many variables influence the success of enforcement through judicial or quasi-judicial
mechanisms but one important variable are provisions of ius standi as they have a gate-keeping
function. International human rights law can be rendered more effective if individual victims
have both de jure and de facto access to its remedies. This article analyzes the different incen-
tives provided by complaint mechanisms for individuals, groups or NGOs to make use of inter-
national human rights bodies. They are such, that an insufficient enforcement of IHRL can be
expected.
1 Dr. iur. lic.rer.pol. Anne van Aaken, Senior Research Fellow, Max Planck Institute for the Research on
Collective Goods, Kurt-Schumacher-Strasse 10, 53113 Bonn, Germany, Email: [email protected].
I would like to thank the participants of the International Human Rights discussion group at the Max-Planck-
Institute for helpful hints and discussions. Many thanks also go to the participants of the conference
“Analyzing International Conflict Resolution”, Saarbrücken, Germany, 15th - 17th Oct. 2004, especially
Stefan Oeter for his comment as well as Gralf-Peter Calliess, Tom Ginsburg, Larry Helfer, Wilfried Hinsch,
Roland Kirstein, Karl Meessen, Eric Neumayer and Eric Posner. Special thanks go to Stefan Bechthold,
Rudolf Bernhardt, Pia Carazo, Christoph Engel, Matthias Goldmann, Martin Hellwig and Stefan Voigt for
very helpful critique. Last but not least, I would like to thank Sara von Skerst for help with the footnotes. All
remaining errors are of course mine.