Transcending Human Rights Instrumentalism
Date
2017
Authors
Ganbat, Narantuya
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Abstract
Whether human rights treaties produce an impact on the ground is
a highly contested question in international law. I engage in
this debate in the present thesis offering a qualitative study of
the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons
with Disabilities in Australia and Mongolia. The scholarship
commonly understands human rights treaties in legalistic terms.
Treaty outcomes are measured on the basis of the direct effects
of their norms. State ratification and incorporation of treaty
norms in domestic legal orders are perceived as the principal
ways whereby human rights treaties penetrate into and transform
domestic contexts. A common prescription for better treaty
implementation is to increase their coercive enforcement. I call
this view human rights instrumentalism and, in this thesis, argue
that it offers a limited understanding of the role that the
treaties play in national arenas.
The thesis illustrates that, in the years following the adoption
of the Disabilities Convention in 2006, vibrant legal and policy
developments have taken place in the two countries studied. Those
laws and policies have typically embraced the international law.
Yet, when tracing their lineage, the Convention’s effects are
seen to be largely indirect to those domestic legal reforms. At
the same time, the research identifies a significant non-legal
impact of the Convention, which, regardless of the particular
norms of the treaty or domestic incorporation thereof, profoundly
affects the social fabric of Australia and Mongolia. The thesis
argues that such an outcome emanates essentially from the
symbolic or political power of the treaty, and describes the
subtle ways in which the Disabilities Convention functions as a
social symbol in the two domestic contexts.
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domestic impacts of international human rights treaties, UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Australia, Mongolia
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Thesis (PhD)
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