Issues

We work to ensure that States and companies meet their human rights duties, and guarantee justice and remedies for victims.

We are engaged in ongoing initiatives at the UN to elaborate new instruments to address the conduct of businesses. Since 2014, we have conducted advocacy around State negotiations for a legally binding instrument to regulate the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises, as mandated by the UN Human Rights Council. We are also involved in parallel negotiations around a potential new instrument addressed at the specific activities of private military and security companies. We contribute legal guidance and analysis to these contentious processes, and assist in strategic litigation cases to ensure that global and regional standards are implemented nationally.

The ICJ works for the full realisation of civil, cultural, economic, political, and social human rights. All of these rights, as affirmed by all States in the landmark Vienna Declaration of 1993, “are universal, indivisible and interdependent and interrelated”, to be treated “globally in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing”. Nonetheless, in practice, many States fail to respect this principle, often to the detriment of economic, social and cultural rights. These include, among others, the rights to decent work, housing, food, water and sanitation, social security, health and education.

Those who suffer violations and abuses of these rights typically face major obstacles in accessing justice, effective remedies and reparations. The ICJ works with partners at the national, regional and global levels to identify and counter these obstacles.

At the international level, we advocate for stronger standards and mechanisms for the enforcement and protection of ESCR, including the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. We also work for implementation of these rights in the laws, policies and practices of States around the world.

The ICJ sees both the opportunities and challenges of protecting human rights in the context of rapidly developing digital technologies. We work to ensure that fundamental freedoms, such as freedom of expression and freedom of association, are protected online, and that human rights defenders and others are not targeted for their online activities.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to improve the realisation of human rights by, for example, facilitating access to healthcare and improving the administration of justice systems. However, there is an inherent risk of these technologies infringing on a range of human rights.

The challenges faced by persons with disabilities in accessing justice are deeply ingrained within domestic criminal justice systems around the world. They range from completely segregated legal systems for persons with disabilities, to arbitrary legal capacity restrictions for persons with disabilities and to broader failures to ensure accessibility of justice systems, including reasonable accommodations for persons with disabilities.

Nearly 20 years ago, the ICJ joined the successful advocacy efforts that resulted in a strong Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) to address these challenges. Since then, we have continued to play an important role in the elaboration of complementary standards – the International Principles and Guidelines on Access to Justice for Persons with Disabilities – which were adopted in 2020. This established a universal normative framework aimed at guiding efforts to secure access to justice for persons with disabilities worldwide. The ICJ was one of the few named sponsors invited to formally endorse these Principles and we continue to play a key role in their promotion and dissemination. We work closely with local partners around the world, providing support to global and domestic legal advocacy towards law reform, and the implementation of the CRPD in line with the Principles.

States and business enterprises alike bear substantial responsibility for the exponential rise in extreme global environmental damage, including from catastrophic climate change, and the resulting adverse human rights impacts. Environmentally destructive practices typically give rise to disproportionate and differential impacts on populations that may be marginalised or in vulnerable situations. While States have finally now recognized the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment as a self-standing right, the development and implementation of laws, policies and practices to effectively implement that right has been sorely lacking. The ICJ considers global efforts to tackle environmental challenges such as climate requirement and rights-based approaches, adopting core Rule of Law principles around access to justice and the right to effective redress. To that end, the ICJ has participated in strategic litigation to promote the principle that protection of the environment and addressing of environmental obligations are essential human rights obligations.

Business enterprises, for their part, often outsource environmentally destructive activities to jurisdictions where protections for human rights and the environment are generally weak, and rights holders have fewer opportunities for redress. Effective remedies remain elusive for most rights holders who are victims of such environmentally-irresponsible and destructive business activities. The international and domestic regulatory legal regimes are generally inadequate. Voluntary guidelines on business and human rights currently fall short of adequately responding to often-overlapping human rights and environmental abuses, and are fraught with inconsistencies, exemptions, and a lack of enforceability. To address this, more mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence laws (HREDD laws) are needed at the domestic, regional, and global levels. The ICJ advocates for stronger international and global legal frameworks, including HREDD.

An independent judiciary and legal profession are indispensable for the rule of law and fair administration of justice.

They act as a check against the unlawful and arbitrary use of authority by governments, facilitating access to justice to all by providing for redress and holding powerful actors like state officials and businesses accountable for their actions. Independent judiciaries protect the rights of all persons, including the marginalised and disadvantaged. The judiciary must be protected from interference, politicisation, coercion or intimidation. Without a fully independent judiciary, there can be no state accountability, no access to justice and no effective legal remedy for affected individuals.

The ICJ advocates for the protection of judges and lawyers from undue interference or reprisals for duly discharging their duties, and for their accountability when they breach their duties.

We cover issues including competence and impartiality of courts and prosecutors, judicial accountability, limits on the use of military tribunals, traditional and customary justice systems, the right to a fair trial and separation of powers.

We facilitate dialogue between judges, lawyers and prosecutors around the world and have played a leading role in the development of international standards and in the establishment of, and continued engagement with, the mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers.
We produce guidance for legal practitioners, and work on the development of international standards and jurisprudence in this area. We also undertake research missions and trial observations, and act when jurists or lawyers come under attack.

International human rights law protects individuals from discrimination and violence on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Yet lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and Intersex (LGBTI) individuals around the world suffer systematic violation of their rights. Many jurisdictions, especially those with colonial legacies, not only do not provide protection for LGBTI people, but actually facilitate and perpetuate violations through criminal and administrative law. In more than 70 countries, same-sex sexual relationships are criminalised, sometimes with severe penalties even including death.

The ICJ intervenes through strategic cases in domestic jurisdictions to protect the rights of LGBTI persons, and provides legal analysis and guidance, including through the development of legal practitioners guides.

Throughout the world, women continue to face widespread discrimination, sexual and gender-based violence and lack of means to access justice for these violations and abuse. Legal frameworks often serve to systemically ingrain and sustain discrimination and inequality, and perpetuate gender stereotypes. They allow for impunity for abuses, and fail to provide for effective legal protection, remedy and reparation.

Women human rights defenders, lawyers, prosecutors and judges who work to make change and represent powerful voices for justice, equality and accountability, are often systematically disadvantaged and exposed to violence and abuse because of their status as women, or because of their focus on issues of gender-equality or rights issues facing women.

The ICJ supports the engagement of women human rights defenders and legal practitioners with the administration of justice in order to defend and advance women’s rights. We work with them to identify the gendered risks and forms of discrimination they face and to advance women’s access to justice, including through legal and practical assistance and support for challenges to discriminatory laws and protection gaps and demands for accountability for violations and abuses.

Women judges are frequently at the vanguard of struggles to ensure the independence and impartiality of their profession. Many are shifting the internal culture of judiciaries, upending stereotypes and gender-norms, and advancing the legal protection of human rights and equality. Yet women’s full and equal participation in the world’s judiciaries remains a matter of critical concern, and they are typically underrepresented, particularly at senior and leadership levels. The ICJ works to support all judges and lawyers in their efforts to transform the judiciary, including by achieving gender parity in their profession. We developed the Bangkok General Guidance for Judges in Applying a Gender Perspective which have been instrumental in addressing gender biases and advancing women’s legal rights. See our Impact page for more details.

We work to defend and strengthen international human rights standards and mechanisms through the United Nations and in its agencies. We work to make the UN an effective institution through which human rights, humanitarian and criminal law and standards may be progressively developed and monitored.

The ICJ advocates directly at the United Nations, with a particular focus on the Geneva-based human rights mechanisms. We engage with the UN treaty bodies, and the Human Rights Council. This includes work with the Council’s subsidiary bodies, including the ‘Special Procedure’ mandates and the Universal Periodic Review.The ICJ also engages in international standard setting, particularly through the processes set up by the Human Rights Council and the UN General Assembly.

We make legal submissions to the Universal Periodic Review and Special Procedures, and the treaty bodies, on States’ implementation of international human rights law. We provide submissions on countries or themes being considered by the Council and the treaty bodies, including interventions concerning the development or application of specific areas of law.

We also engage in the negotiation of resolutions and instruments being developed by the Council and its mechanisms.