by Diana Cariboni

Since 2013, this system has been under increasing pressure from internationally-connected, conservative lobby groups and states. Español.

The attack first started when I was president”, Margarette May Macaulay, a lawyer and former judge from Jamaica who was elected to the top post at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in 2018. She told openDemocracy how the US state department “said they could not give money to spend on my rapporteurship because we were promoting abortion”.

“We do not promote anything,'' said the lawyer, explaining the work of the body she oversaw. Its mandate includes investigating rights violations including unfair trials, extrajudicial executions, and violence against women. “The only thing we do lobby for is for ratification of conventions,'' she said. “But they still cut the money because I think they wanted to anyway”.

The IACHR is one of two main, autonomous bodies of the Organisation for American States (OAS). The regional organisation has 35 member-states including all Latin American and Caribbean countries, though Cuba does not participate in its talks, plus Canada and the US – which is the system’s main funder though it never ratified its American Convention on Human Rights.

In December 2018, nine US senators publicly asked secretary of state Mike Pompeo to cut funding for the OAS on the grounds that this money would be used on to “lobby for abortion in Latin America”. They specifically criticised Macaulay for organising a public hearing on sexual and reproductive rights in Argentina while that country’s parliament was debating an abortion bill. Read more via Open Democracy