To what extent have international courts and tribunals been successful in upholding human rights?

Arguably the most successful is the ECHR. For example in 2010 the ECHR successfully pressured Bosnia into reforming its constitution because it discriminated against the Jew and Roma population.  This is a clear example of how an international court can be successful. In addition, in May 2005, the ECHR ruled that Turkey's trial of Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan was unfair. "The applicant was not tried by an independent and impartial tribunal," the European Court of Human Rights said in a statement. The judges ruled that the presence of a military judge on the panel meant that the Turkish court's judgement could not have been fair. Finally, stopping and searching without firm grounds of warranted suspicion were deemed to be illegal in the UK by the ECHR.                                    

However there are several limitations to the ECHR. Perhaps the largest being it only has jurisdiction within countries within the EU; furthermore ultimately these states still retain ultimate sovereignty. It also relies on states to make arrests themselves. And so fundamentally the ECHR can only really act as an advisor because it has limited authority and has no real way of enforcing its legal decisions. An example of a case where the ECHR failed to uphold human rights would be the ban on wearing Turkish headscarves in university. Turkey can ban Islamic headscarves in universities, the European Court of Human Rights ruled. The court rejected an appeal by a Turkish woman who argued that the state ban violated her right to an education and discriminated against her. The judges ruled that the ban was justified to maintain order and avoid giving preference to any religion.

International tribunals have also achieved some success. For example in 2011 Ratko Mlodic was arrested in Serbia and extradited to Hague to stand trial for the International Special Tribunal for the crimes against the former Yugoslavia. Furthermore the same tribunal later arrested and all of the 161 men indicated. This is a clear example of how international courts and tribunals can be effective in upholding human rights. However there are still several limitations to International tribunals. For example the same Tribunal for the crimes against the former Yugoslavia failed to charge any politicians related to the NATO invasion, despite the use of uranium and cluster bombs in their assault – both of which were deemed illegal by international bodies. Many would argue that trials such as these are simple ‘show trials’ – a trial conducted primarily to make an impression on other nations. And so although tribunals have achieved some success, they fail to prosecute the majority of human rights abusers.

Arguably the biggest issue regarding International courts and tribunals is that the US is frequently seen as above international law. No US or UK politicians have yet been trialled in regard to war crimes against Afghanistan or Iraq in the 2000s. Furthermore because the courts and tribunals are centred on western ideologies and judicial systems it largely favours western countries. What’s more because of this to some extent the West gets to constitute what is a ‘Human Rights abuse’, essentially giving them free reign. And so although international courts and tribunals may achieve limited success in some areas of the world, it fails to address any Human Rights abuses by the west.

To conclude, there are a few limited examples of International Courts and Tribunals achieving success. The ECHR however has achieved the most success in upholding human rights as seen in the examples mentioned previously. However it can be argued that all international courts and tribunals are based on western values and thus western states such as the USA dictate what the definition of a human rights abuse is.