Journal Citation:
23 UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND LAW JOURNAL 22-53 (2004).
This article does not specifically address women's rights, but reviews the right of individual petition under the petition mechanisms of the three regional systems (European, Inter-American, African) and the United Nations treaty and charter based systems. The author's historical overview in Part II describes the previously state-centric nature of these types of institutions. This finding is contrasted to the modern day human rights systems in Parts III-V. In assessing the regional, charter-based and treaty-based approaches, the author first discusses the institutional framework, then the issues of access, remedies and compliance. The author concludes that although all the individual petition mechanisms suffer certain shortcomings, the departure from the previous state-centric norm of international and regional institutions points to the continued growth of the individual as a rights-bearing subject of international law. [Descriptors: Applying Human Rights Law - International, International]