Human rights protection in international organizations in the era of multi-level governance and legal pluralism

Heupel's chapter explores the emergence of human rights protection provisions in international organizations (IOs). It shows that such provisions can emerge via different pathways, namely hegemonic and judicial lawmaking. It suggests that multi-level governance and legal pluralism have detrimental and beneficial effects for the rule of law, depending on specific scope conditions. States at first exploited the opportunities provided by these phenomena and delegated competences to IOs without attaching effective human rights safeguards. Over time, however, powerful actors, benefitting from established routines and the presence of domestic/international scripts, exploited the access points provided by the multi-level nature of the underlying governance arrangements and their embeddedness in different legal orders and successfully made the World Bank and the European Union to commit to human rights safeguards