Human Rights in the Arab League and CARICOM – Approaching Legitimation Contests in the Global South

How do regional organizations use human rights for legitimation? Dominant theories of international organization and regional integration posit that regional organizations are an integral part of liberal global governance institutions and by that would also draw from a liberal lingo for legitimation. As human rights evolved to become part of a dominant moral discourse in today’s world, all ROs would also portray themselves in the language of human rights. I challenge this conventional perspective by proposing an analysis of regional organization in the global south that rests on the distinctive theoretical premise that legitimation via human rights unfolds differently in the global south than in ROs from the global north. My argument proceeds in three steps. First, I outline the conventional view on human rights in ROs and counter this with descriptive, empirical data. Second, I suggest an alternative explanation for legitimation via human rights in ROs and elaborate an empirical strategy to assess this explanation. For this I draw on post-colonial research on human rights, work on authoritarianism in regional integration and organisational studies. Finally, I examine my argument empirically through qualitative comparative case studies of the League of Arab States and the Caribbean Community, both of which are classical global south regional organizations with distinct records on human rights. In these case studies, based on primary sources and semi-structured interview with stakeholders, I find that despite being democratic in membership, well-equipped institutionally thus akin to conventional northern ROs, the Caribbean Community does not refer to human rights organizations for legitimation. Instead, it makes uses of a functional language sufficient to remedy low levels of external pressure. The League of Arab States on the contrary makes frequent use of this legitimation by layering human rights onto its original legitimation. It does so in order to simultaneously cater to its core constituency, i.e. member states as well as increasing external pressure from a novel, international audience.