Towards a Geopolitical Genealogy of Human Rights in the Americas: The Rise of a Hemispheric Legal Tradition, the Impact of the Cold War on the Inter-American Human Rights System and Its Current Challenges

JUAN PABLO SCARFI

Guadalajara

Congreso; LASA 2020; 2020

Latin American Studies Association

This paper examines the repercussions of the foundational declarations of the OAS on human rights in 1948, the projection of US Cold War concerns of containing socialist regimes to the OAS, and the geopolitical and humanitarian responses of the US and the OAS to the Cuban Revolution (1959). These early OAS declarations led to the 30 and 32 resolutions on the ?Preservation and Defence of Democracy in America? and ?the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man.? The paper focuses on the emergence of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission (IAHRC), created in 1959, and the final exclusion of Cuba from the OAS in 1962, and it argues that the institutional concerns within both the IAHRC and the OAS in their early stages were informed by US-led Cold War geopolitical and humanitarian concerns and contributed to shaping their present legal and political form.