About the Institute for the Advancement of Justice and Human Rights

The Institute for the Advancement of Justice and Human Rights (IAJ) is an independent non-governmental organization and the United States' Paris Principles–organized civil society body for the comprehensive monitoring, investigation, and documentation of human rights violations by domestic authorities across all human rights treaty obligations binding on the United States.

The IAJ investigates violations occurring within judicial processes, family courts, child protective services, law enforcement, and administrative agencies. It applies the Istanbul Protocol (2022) — the international standard for the investigation and documentation of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment — as its medico-legal investigative standard. It reports its findings to the United Nations Committee Against Torture, UN Special Procedures, the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT), and other competent international treaty bodies.

The IAJ is a California 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation (EIN 99-2887013), entirely independent of government funding and direction.

To understand what the IAJ is — and why the precision of its institutional design matters — it is necessary to understand what it is not, and why that distinction is the foundation of its credibility before international bodies.

National Human Rights Institutions: What They Are, Why They Matter, and Why the United States Has None

Under international human rights law, a National Human Rights Institution (NHRI) is a body established and empowered by the state — through constitutional provision, legislative enactment, or executive decree — to promote and protect human rights independently of the government that created it. NHRIs are neither government agencies nor NGOs. They occupy a distinctive third space: conferred with state authority, yet required by their founding instruments to operate independently of state control.

The international criteria for NHRIs were established in 1993 by UN General Assembly Resolution 48/134, which adopted what are known as the Paris Principles. The Paris Principles specify that an NHRI must: have a mandate as broad as possible covering all human rights; be independent of government and financially autonomous; have the power to investigate, report, and make recommendations; reflect the diversity of the society it serves; maintain transparent complaint procedures open to the public; and publish its findings.

This breadth of mandate requirement is the Paris Principles' most fundamental substantive requirement. An institution whose mandate is limited to a single treaty or a single category of rights cannot fulfill the NHRI function — because human rights are indivisible and interdependent, and because the persons whose rights are violated typically hold rights under multiple treaty frameworks simultaneously.

International recognition of NHRIs is administered by the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI). GANHRI “A status” accreditation grants an institution procedural standing before the United Nations that civil society organizations do not hold: A-status NHRIs may sit separately from NGOs at UN treaty body sessions, submit independent reports, and participate in Universal Periodic Review procedures in their own right. “B status” grants observer access. Civil society organizations participate through different, more limited channels.

The United States does not have a GANHRI-accredited NHRI. It does not have any institution that meets the Paris Principles criteria. Proposals to establish one have been made and ignored for decades. This is not a bureaucratic gap. It is a structural compliance failure under the international legal obligations the United States has accepted.

The IAJ's Institutional Position: A Paris Principles–Organized Civil Society Body

The IAJ does not claim to be an NHRI. It cannot be one, because NHRI status requires state action — legislative or constitutional — that only government can provide. No organization, however independently structured or methodologically rigorous, can self-accredit as an NHRI. To claim otherwise would misrepresent the Paris Principles framework.

What the IAJ claims — and what it demonstrates through its institutional conduct — is more precise and more important in the current U.S. landscape: the IAJ is an NGO organized under Paris Principles standards, operating by Istanbul Protocol methodology, performing in institutional practice the functions that a Paris Principles–compliant NHRI would perform for the United States, in the continuing absence of any such institution.

International human rights scholars and practitioners describe institutions in this position as “shadow NHRIs” or “functional NHRI equivalents” — civil society organizations that exist in the vacancy left by a state’s failure to establish the independent human rights body its international obligations require. GANHRI itself has observed that where states fail to establish Paris Principles–compliant NHRIs, civil society bodies operating at equivalent methodological and independence standards warrant particular consideration in treaty body proceedings.

The IAJ’s design is intentional and precise. It is organized as a Paris Principles body because it intends to demonstrate — through its methodology, findings, breadth of mandate, and communications with competent international bodies — what a real NHRI would find and require of the U.S. government in terms of human rights and international law compliance. The demonstration is itself the institutional purpose.

Why the Absence of a U.S. NHRI Is Itself a Treaty Compliance Failure

The United States ratified the Convention Against Torture in 1994. UNCAT imposes obligations — including effective prevention measures (Article 2), prompt and impartial investigation (Article 12), accessible complaint mechanisms (Article 13), and confidential inquiry authority (Article 20) — that presuppose the existence of institutions capable of independent investigation without deference to the state being assessed.

The Istanbul Protocol explicitly requires that investigations be conducted by bodies independent of the state whose conduct is being assessed. Without an NHRI or equivalent independent body, the United States cannot fully implement these obligations in the judicial context, because there is no institution empowered to examine judicial conduct against international standards without the judiciary's permission or cooperation.

The U.S. government has repeatedly assured the Committee Against Torture that existing domestic mechanisms provide equivalent protection. The Committee’s 2014 Concluding Observations (CAT/C/USA/CO/3-5) disputed that assurance. The IAJ’s 500 complaint registrants (as of March 26, 2026) since August 4, 2025 (commencement of intake) provides empirical indication that domestic mechanisms do not provide relief, remedy, or accountability.

The Breadth of the IAJ's Human Rights Mandate

Consistent with the Paris Principles’ requirement that a mandate be as broad as possible covering all human rights, the IAJ investigates violations across the full range of treaty obligations binding on the United States — whether by ratification, signature, or operation of customary international law. The IAJ does not limit itself to any single treaty, category of rights, or institutional setting.

• Convention Against Torture (UNCAT) — Ratified 1994 Prohibits torture and CIDT by public officials where the five Article 1 elements are satisfied: act, intentionality, severity, official capacity, and enumerated purpose. The text contains no setting qualifier. The IAJ’s legal framework establishes on five independent grounds — textual, through CAT Committee interpretation, through evolved jus cogens, through the U.S. RUDs’ own equivalence promise, and through functional-custody analysis — that UNCAT’s prohibition extends to judicial, family court, CPS, law enforcement, and administrative conduct.
• International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) — Ratified 1992 Protects the right to life (Art. 6); prohibition of torture and CIDT (Art. 7); freedom from arbitrary detention (Art. 9); right to a fair trial and equal access to justice (Art. 14); freedom of expression and petition without retaliation (Arts. 19, 25); and equal protection without discrimination (Art. 26). Nearly every IAJ case engages ICCPR Articles 7, 14, and 26 simultaneously with UNCAT.
• International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) — Ratified 1994 Prohibits racial discrimination in the administration of justice (Art. 5) and requires effective remedies for discriminatory official acts (Art. 6). Racial disparities in CPS conduct, family court separation orders, and judicial treatment of pro se litigants are among the patterns the IAJ has documented.
• Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) — Signed 2009, not ratified The U.S. is bound by its signature under VCLT Article 18 not to defeat the treaty’s object and purpose. CRPD norms have been incorporated into the UNCAT framework through the CAT Committee’s progressive interpretation. Art. 13 requires effective access to justice; Art. 15 prohibits torture and CIDT against persons with disabilities; Art. 17 protects integrity of the person. Denial of disability accommodations in judicial proceedings simultaneously engages UNCAT Art. 1, ICCPR Arts. 7 and 14, and CRPD Arts. 13, 15, and 17.
• Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) — Signed 1995, not ratified The U.S. is the only UN member state not to have ratified the CRC. Its core protections — including the best interests of the child (Art. 3), the right to maintain family relations (Arts. 8–9), prohibition on arbitrary parental separation (Art. 9), and prohibition of torture and CIDT against children (Art. 37) — represent customary international law standards binding on the United States. The majority of IAJ complaints concern family court and CPS conduct directly cognizable under the CRC.
• Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) — Signed 1980, not ratified CEDAW norms with customary law status bind the United States. Art. 2 requires elimination of discrimination in public and official life; Art. 15 guarantees equal rights in courts and tribunals; Art. 16 addresses family rights. Gendered patterns in family court conduct are among the IAJ’s documented findings.
• International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) — Signed 1977, not ratified The right to health (Art. 12), social security (Art. 9), and adequate standard of living (Art. 11) are implicated by IAJ-documented conduct that causes physical harm, strips persons of resources through weaponized procedural conduct, and denies access to medical care through jurisdictional control.
• Jus Cogens and Customary International Law The absolute prohibition on torture is a peremptory norm of general international law binding on the United States regardless of treaty ratification, reservation, or declaration. The International Court of Justice has confirmed its erga omnes character. It cannot be limited by U.S. RUDs, defeated by non-self-execution doctrines, or confined to institutional settings the RUDs do not address.
• The UN Charter — Articles 55 and 56 Obligate all member states to take joint and separate action to promote universal respect for human rights for all. Documentation of systematic violations for which no domestic remedy exists constitutes evidence of Charter non-compliance alongside specific treaty breach.
• Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide — Ratified 1988 The Genocide Convention, signed in 1948 and ratified by the United States in 1988, establishes the absolute prohibition on genocide as a matter of treaty obligation supplementing its jus cogens status. While genocide falls outside the IAJ’s primary investigative mandate, the Convention forms part of the overarching framework of absolute, non-derogable prohibitions within which UNCAT obligations are interpreted and applied. Its ratification confirms the United States’ formal acceptance of the principle that certain acts by state agents are internationally prohibited regardless of domestic law.
• OPCAT (Optional Protocol to UNCAT) — Not signed or ratified by the United States The Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture establishes a system of preventive visits to places of detention and, critically, provides in Article 4(2) the authoritative functional definition of deprivation of liberty that underpins the IAJ’s jurisdictional-custody analysis. The United States has neither signed nor ratified OPCAT. That non-ratification is itself a compliance gap: OPCAT’s preventive visit mechanism and its National Preventive Mechanism requirement represent exactly the kind of independent oversight the IAJ exists to provide in their absence. The IAJ relies on OPCAT Article 4(2) — “any form of detention or imprisonment or the placement of a person in a public or private custodial setting which that person is not permitted to leave at will by order of any judicial, administrative or other authority” — as treaty authority for its jurisdictional custody framework, noting that the definition was drafted to be deliberately broad and to prevent narrow architectural readings from insulating new forms of state coercive control from the anti-torture framework.
• The Inter-American System — OAS Charter obligations accepted Although the United States signed but has not ratified the American Convention on Human Rights, it is a founding member of the Organization of American States and is bound by the OAS Charter’s human rights obligations. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has jurisdiction to receive individual petitions against the United States and has previously found the U.S. in violation of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man. The IACHR provides a parallel accountability mechanism, independent of the UN treaty body system, available to persons whose rights have been violated by U.S. authorities. It can issue precautionary measures, request information from the U.S. government, and publish findings that carry significant international weight.

The breadth of the IAJ’s mandate matters practically in every case it investigates. A coercive parent–child separation order issued without due process engages UNCAT Articles 1 and 16, ICCPR Articles 7, 9, 14, and 17, CRC Articles 3, 8, 9, and 37, CEDAW Articles 15 and 16 where the parent is a woman, and ICESCR Articles 11 and 12 where the separation causes poverty or health deterioration. No single-treaty analysis captures the full human rights dimension of that one act. The IAJ analyzes every case against every applicable treaty framework.

The IRCT: What It Is and Why the Collaboration Matters

The IRCT Is Not a Treaty Body

A UN treaty body is a committee of independent experts established by a specific UN human rights treaty to monitor States Parties’ compliance. The Committee Against Torture, the Human Rights Committee, and the CERD Committee are UN treaty bodies — created by treaty, composed of experts elected by States Parties, and serviced by the OHCHR. The IRCT is none of these things. It was not created by treaty, is not an intergovernmental organization, and has no state-delegated power.

What the IRCT Is

The International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT) is an independent international NGO — specifically, an international health professional membership organization founded in 1985, growing from a group of Danish doctors who began treating torture survivors in 1974. It is the global umbrella body for torture rehabilitation centres and programmes worldwide: currently over 170 member centres in 80 countries, treating approximately 80,000 torture survivors annually. Its formal UN status is special consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) — a recognized civil society status, not treaty body or intergovernmental organization status.

What Makes the IRCT Exceptional

What distinguishes the IRCT from any ordinary NGO is the combination of four characteristics no other organization holds simultaneously.

• The Istanbul Protocol. The IRCT is the institutional custodian and global deployer of the Istanbul Protocol — the UN Manual on the Effective Investigation and Documentation of Torture, which is the international standard for medico-legal torture investigation. Its Independent Forensic Expert Group (IFEG), established in 2012, is the international hub of expertise on torture investigation and documentation. When the CAT Committee, Special Rapporteurs, or domestic courts assess whether a torture investigation meets international standards, the Istanbul Protocol is the benchmark.
• Direct clinical expertise. No other organization has comparable direct clinical and forensic experience of what torture does to human beings — its physical sequelae, psychological consequences, patterns across institutional settings, and long-term rehabilitation requirements. This knowledge is generated by approximately 4,000 professionals treating survivors across 80 countries simultaneously.
• The Torture Journal. The IRCT publishes the world’s leading academic source for peer-reviewed research from the medical and legal frontiers of torture rehabilitation and prevention.
• Embedded engagement with the international human rights architecture. The IRCT conducts over 12,000 advocacy interventions each year, including at the UN in Geneva and with regional and national courts, to promote justice and reparations for torture survivors.

Professor James Lin — the IRCT’s Istanbul Protocol Programme Coordinator and Senior Legal Advisor, with approximately 20 years of professional experience spanning OSCE war crimes monitoring in Bosnia-Herzegovina with collaboration with the ICTY, ABA Rule of Law Initiative programmes in Nepal and Thailand, FIDH Southeast Asia Regional Office leadership, and the global development and deployment of the Istanbul Protocol — brings to the IAJ’s work the most rigorous international practice available in Istanbul Protocol methodology and international torture law. The analytical framework developed from that consultation is documented in the IAJ Analytical Memorandum, UNCAT and jus cogens: a contemporary perspective (Version 10, March 2026, IAJ Reference PP-2026-UNCAT-01). Professor Lin has not reviewed this memorandum and his acknowledgment does not constitute endorsement.

The IAJ's Legal Framework

The core of the IAJ’s legal position is that UNCAT’s absolute prohibition on torture is not limited to custodial or interrogation settings. UNCAT Article 1 defines torture by reference to five elements: any act; intentionally inflicted; causing severe pain or suffering, physical or mental; by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official; for an enumerated purpose. The text contains no setting qualifier. This position is supported by five independent grounds:

• The treaty text. Article 1 creates no setting exclusion. The ordinary meaning of its enacted text, read under VCLT Article 31, extends to any official conduct satisfying its five elements.
• The CAT Committee. General Comment No. 2 (2008) confirms that the obligation to prevent torture extends to all branches of government, including the judiciary, and applies to all persons within state jurisdiction.
• Evolved jus cogens. The absolute prohibition on torture is a peremptory norm of general international law. Its minimum content is not limited to detention or custody. It operates above and independently of treaty architecture.
• The U.S. RUDs. The United States’ Reservations, Understandings, and Declarations carry an equivalence promise: that existing domestic law provides equivalent protection. Six European States Parties formally objected to the U.S. RUDs as incompatible with the Convention’s object and purpose. Where domestic mechanisms demonstrably fail, the RUDs’ own logic confirms the international obligation is unfulfilled.
• Functional-custody and jurisdictional custody analysis. Persons compelled to participate in proceedings by force of law — who cannot exit without catastrophic legal consequences, whose medical care and procedural rights are controlled by the presiding authority, and who have no effective mechanism for relief — are in a relationship of jurisdictional custody: a defined middle category between physical confinement and freedom, supported by OPCAT Article 4(2), ICCPR Article 9, CRPD Articles 14 and 17, and CRC Article 37. Within that relationship, treatment satisfying the remaining Article 1 elements is within the Convention’s scope.

What the IAJ Investigates: 24 Systemic Factors

Based on its intake since August 2025 — of 500 registered complainants (March 26, 2026) and 60+ third-party reports, the IAJ has so far identified 24 recurring categories of official conduct plausibly constituting torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment under UNCAT Articles 1 and 16. These are policy-based institutional patterns with no effective domestic accountability mechanism. They operate at three levels:

• Level 1 — Direct harm factors: specific prohibited acts causing documented severe suffering that satisfy the Article 1 five-element test or the Article 16 CIDT threshold.
• Level 2 — Facilitation and mechanism factors: institutional mechanisms that perpetuate harm, defeat the lawful-sanctions carve-out, and make the harmful relationship inescapable.
• Level 3 — Systemic impunity factors: the absence of investigation, prosecution, training, prevention, and remedy that allows direct harm to continue indefinitely.

The majority of the IAJ’s complaints concern family courts and child protective services — coercive parent–child separation, denial of medical care, procedural weaponization, and retaliation for assertion of legal rights. The IAJ investigates all 24 categories across all institutional settings with equal methodological rigor. In September 2025, the IAJ submitted its Preliminary Shadow Report to the Committee Against Torture’s 83rd Session (IAJ-CAT-20250919-002-PUB), identifying the 24 systemic factors and requesting initiation of an Article 20 confidential inquiry into the United States.

Contributing to the Evolution of Human Rights Understanding

The IAJ’s mandate extends beyond investigation, documentation, and reporting. In filling the gap left by the absence of a U.S. NHRI, the IAJ has found itself working on questions that existing frameworks have not yet fully addressed — questions about how international human rights law applies in institutional settings that were not the primary focus of the treaties governing them. The IAJ offers its analysis on these questions not as settled conclusions but as contributions to a conversation the international human rights community is still working through.

Why the U.S. Legal Setting Demands Careful Analysis

The United States operates a formally sophisticated legal system, governed by doctrines — judicial immunity, non-self-execution, the lawful sanctions framework — refined over generations. Working within this environment requires engaging seriously with those doctrines, because a human rights analysis that does not account for them will not reach the people it needs to reach. The analytical work required must meet the system on its own terms. Where the IAJ’s analysis is sound, it holds it with confidence. Where it remains contested or uncertain, it says so honestly.

The IAJ–IRCT Synthesis as Academic Contribution

The IAJ Analytical Memorandum advances original arguments for which no controlling precedent exists, engages adversarial critique systematically and transparently, and makes its reasoning available for peer scrutiny. It has been subjected to seven rounds of adversarial stress-testing. Several of its contributions engage questions where no controlling authority exists.

Forum Nullus

One contribution is the analytical concept the IAJ terms forum nullus: the position that a proceeding which systematically deprives a litigant of the basic conditions for a fair hearing — by institutional design rather than inadvertence, for a prohibited purpose — may not be a court in the sense that law and human rights treaties require. This has implications for the finality of judgments obtained through such processes and for the jus cogens prohibition on denial of access to justice. The IAJ offers this as an analytical framework, not as established doctrine.

Contactless Battery: Torture Without Physical Contact

The Memorandum also develops the analysis of judicial conduct that causes documented physical harm — permanent neurological damage, immunocompromise, nerve death — through compelled procedural participation rather than direct physical contact. The absence of physical contact does not, on the IAJ’s analysis, change the structure of the harm where it is foreknown, documented, and deliberately continued for a prohibited purpose. UNCAT Article 1 requires no physical contact — only that a public official inflict severe suffering for a prohibited purpose. Whether this analysis is correct is for the international human rights community to assess.

Jurisdictional Custody: A New Category in International Human Rights Law

One of the IAJ's most significant conceptual contributions — one that remains the subject of active development and that the IAJ advances as argued doctrine rather than settled law — is the concept of jurisdictional custody: a defined middle category in international human rights law that fills the gap between physical confinement (covered by conventional custody doctrine) and complete freedom (outside the anti-torture framework entirely).

Prior international human rights doctrine has proceeded almost entirely from a binary distinction: a person is either in custody, in the conventional physical sense, or free. This binary was adequate for the paradigm cases UNCAT's drafters had in mind in 1984. It is insufficient for the forms of official coercion that the IAJ investigates today — where courts, administrative agencies, child protective services, and family courts hold persons in relationships of coercive compulsion that are neither physical custody in the traditional sense nor genuine freedom.

The IAJ proposes jurisdictional custody as a defined category characterized by four elements: (a) a state authority with coercive legal power over a person; (b) a compulsory legal relationship from which the person cannot exit without catastrophic consequences — loss of all legal claims, permanent termination of parental rights, contempt of court, financial ruin; (c) documented foreknown severe harm from continued participation; and (d) absence of any effective domestic remedy or mechanism of exit.

This definition finds support across five treaty frameworks simultaneously:

• OPCAT Article 4(2) defines “deprivation of liberty” as “any form of detention or imprisonment or the placement of a person in a public or private custodial setting which that person is not permitted to leave at will by order of any judicial, administrative or other authority.” The definition uses “any” three times and names judicial authority as the mechanism of compulsion. A litigant subject to court orders compelling participation under threat of contempt and default satisfies this definition on its face.
• ICCPR Article 9 guarantees that no one shall be subjected to arbitrary deprivation of liberty. The Human Rights Committee, in General Comment No. 35 (2014), interpreted this in functional rather than architectural terms: what matters is the degree and nature of state-imposed restraint, not the physical environment. Legal compulsion producing inescapability constitutes a cognizable form of restraint on this reading.
• CRPD Article 14 prohibits the deprivation of liberty of persons with disabilities and guarantees reasonable accommodation to persons with disabilities who are deprived of their liberty through any process. A disabled litigant compelled without accommodation in proceedings causing permanent physical harm, who cannot exit without catastrophic legal consequences, is in a situation this provision addresses directly.
• CRPD Article 17 protects every person with a disability's right to physical and mental integrity. Judicial orders compelling participation that a presiding judge knows will cause permanent neurological damage violate bodily integrity regardless of whether the mechanism is physical confinement or legal compulsion.
• CRC Article 37 protects children from deprivation of liberty. Children in family court and CPS proceedings held in state-controlled placements by judicial authority, and unable to leave at will, are in a situation this provision encompasses. Their parents — compelled to participate under threat of permanent termination of parental rights — are simultaneously in the coercive compulsory relationship the jurisdictional-custody analysis describes.

The jurisdictional-custody analysis applies across the full range of institutional settings the IAJ investigates: federal civil litigation, family courts, child protective services, administrative proceedings, and law enforcement conduct authorized by judicial order. In each setting, the four-element definition identifies whether jurisdictional custody exists; the UNCAT Article 1 five-element test then determines whether the conduct within that custody constitutes torture. The concept bridges the gap between the conventional custodial paradigm and the full range of documented institutional harm — establishing that the anti-torture framework's own functional logic has always encompassed the forms of compulsion the IAJ investigates.

This is argued doctrine, not settled law. No treaty body has expressly adopted the jurisdictional custody category. The IAJ advances it as the most coherent synthesis of convergent treaty authority, as a framework capable of application by the CAT Committee in its Article 20 inquiry, and as a contribution to the literature that the international human rights community is developing in response to forms of official conduct that the custody-or-free binary cannot adequately address.

Judicial Persecution and Torture: Clarifying the Analytical Basis

Professor Lin’s extensive field experience in torture investigation identified the need to clarify an important analytical question about the IAJ’s investigation of judicial and institutional conduct: namely, how such conduct relates to the pre-existing treaty discussions of torture, which were developed primarily in custodial and detention contexts rather than in the context of judicial or administrative proceedings. Professor Lin observed that judicial persecution — the systematic use of legal process to harm a person — is not in itself the same thing as torture as defined in international treaty law. This observation is analytically correct and important: the five Article 1 elements of UNCAT define torture with precision, and the mere fact that judicial conduct causes harm does not automatically satisfy those elements.

This observation clarified the need for the IAJ to develop explicit analytical grounding for why, and under what specific conditions, judicial and institutional conduct can satisfy each of the five Article 1 elements. That clarification is reflected throughout the IAJ Analytical Memorandum. The answer the IAJ has developed is not that judicial persecution is always torture, but that where all five Article 1 elements are satisfied — including the severity threshold and a prohibited purpose evidenced by the official’s own documented knowledge of predicted harm — the conduct is torture regardless of the institutional setting in which it occurs. The analysis does not collapse the distinction between judicial persecution and torture; it applies the treaty elements to documented facts to determine which cases cross the threshold. The IAJ is grateful to Professor Lin for the rigour this clarification has brought to the framework.

Bringing Analysis to Those Whose Conduct It Addresses

The IAJ’s intention is to bring its analysis directly to the people and institutions whose conduct it addresses: judicial officers, CPS officials, administrative authorities, and law enforcement personnel — not as accusation, but as education. Many of the officials whose conduct the IAJ investigates are operating within institutional cultures and doctrine-based frameworks that exclude or suppress the international human rights standards governing their conduct. Providing that framework directly — clearly, precisely, and without condemnation — is among the most direct paths to change.

The Goal: Champions, Not Defendants

The IAJ measures its deepest success not in violations documented or treaty submissions filed, but in the number of people who come to understand what they have been doing, accept that understanding with honesty, and use the authority they hold to require something closer to what human rights demands. The IAJ does not know whether it will achieve this in the United States. But it is the goal toward which all of its work is directed.

Global Relevance

The IAJ operates in the United States. But the questions it is working through — how human rights treaties apply to judicial conduct, how domestic immunity interacts with international accountability, how non-custodial official harm is documented and characterized — arise in every legal system. The IAJ does not claim its analysis is universally applicable. But it hopes that the frameworks it develops will be useful to advocates, investigators, and officials in other countries facing analogous questions. The work is done here because this is where the IAJ operates. The ideas, if they are good ones, belong to anyone who can use them.

What the IAJ Does: The Paris Principles Functions in Practice

The IAJ performs the six core functions that a Paris Principles–compliant NHRI performs, across the full breadth of human rights treaty obligations binding on the United States.

• Independent investigation across all human rights frameworks. The IAJ accepts complaints alleging any violation of human rights treaty obligations by public officials. Investigation is conducted independently, without notice to accused officials. Findings are the IAJ’s own institutional conclusions, assessed against all applicable treaty frameworks.
• Medico-legal documentation at Istanbul Protocol standard. Trauma-informed interviewing, credibility and arguability assessment aligned with Istanbul Protocol indicators, medical and psychological evaluation where applicable, and documentation of harm in forms meeting international standards recognized by treaty bodies.
• Pattern identification and systemic analysis. Aggregated findings by demographic, geographic, institutional, and tactical pattern, mapped against all applicable treaty obligations, to assess the systemic character threshold required for Article 20 and other inquiry mechanisms.
• Reporting across the full international accountability architecture. The IAJ communicates with the complete range of international bodies to which the United States owes human rights accountability. This includes: the Committee Against Torture (CAT Committee), whose Article 20 confidential inquiry the IAJ has formally requested; the Human Rights Committee, monitoring ICCPR compliance; the CERD Committee, monitoring ICERD compliance; the UN Human Rights Council and its Universal Periodic Review mechanism; relevant UN Special Procedures including the Special Rapporteur on Torture, the Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, and the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities; the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR); and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). The IAJ submits documentation to each body through the procedures available to civil society organizations.
• Legal-policy analysis and publication. Development and publication of the treaty law framework grounding the IAJ’s findings, across all applicable human rights instruments. The IAJ Analytical Memorandum is the first in a planned series of analytical publications covering the full treaty landscape.
• Education, standard-setting, and government engagement. Model findings, publications, and direct communications with courts, officials, and policymakers, providing independent assessment of human rights compliance across all applicable international standards and identifying the corrections those standards require.

The Full International Accountability Architecture

The IAJ engages with the complete range of international bodies to which the United States owes human rights accountability — not only the treaty bodies corresponding to ratified conventions, but the broader architecture of UN and inter-American mechanisms available to civil society organizations.

UN Treaty Bodies

The IAJ submits documentation to and communicates with the treaty bodies monitoring the human rights treaties that bind the United States. Each body receives documentation relevant to the treaty it monitors, assessed against the IAJ’s multi-treaty framework.

• The Committee Against Torture (CAT Committee) monitors UNCAT compliance. The IAJ submitted its Preliminary Shadow Report to the Committee’s 83rd Session in September 2025 (IAJ-CAT-20250919-002-PUB) and has formally requested initiation of an Article 20 confidential inquiry into the United States.
• The Human Rights Committee monitors ICCPR compliance. The IAJ will submit documentation on ICCPR Articles 7, 9, 14, and 26 violations as its multi-treaty analysis is developed.
• The CERD Committee monitors ICERD compliance. Racial disparities in CPS conduct, family court separation orders, and judicial treatment of pro se litigants documented in the IAJ’s caseload are directly cognizable by the CERD Committee.
• The CRPD Committee, CEDAW Committee, and the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) monitor conventions the United States has signed but not ratified. While these bodies have more limited jurisdiction over the United States as a result, they can receive civil society information and may address U.S. compliance in their general comments and thematic work.

The UN Human Rights Council and Universal Periodic Review

The Human Rights Council, established in 2006, reviews the human rights record of every UN member state through the Universal Periodic Review — a peer review mechanism conducted on a 4.5-year cycle in which other states may make recommendations and in which civil society organizations may submit independent shadow reports. The UPR is the broadest available international accountability mechanism because it reviews states against all human rights obligations, not only those under ratified treaties.

The current situation makes the UPR particularly important for the IAJ’s work. The United States refused to participate in its scheduled November 2025 UPR review, becoming the first UN member state to decline to be reviewed since the mechanism’s creation in 2006. The Human Rights Council has postponed the U.S. review to November 2026. The IAJ regards both the UPR itself and the U.S. government’s refusal to engage with it as matters within its mandate to document and report. Civil society organizations with ECOSOC consultative status — which the IRCT holds — may submit shadow reports and participate in UPR sessions.

UN Special Procedures and the OHCHR

UN Special Procedures are independent experts mandated by the Human Rights Council to report on specific human rights themes or country situations. The most directly relevant to the IAJ’s work are: the Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment; the Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers; and the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Special Rapporteurs may conduct country visits, send urgent appeals to governments, and issue public statements — all mechanisms the IAJ’s documentation supports.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) services all treaty bodies and Special Procedures, maintains the treaty body database, and is a primary recipient of civil society documentation and a key institutional interlocutor for the IAJ.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR)

The IACHR has jurisdiction to receive individual petitions against the United States under the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man. It can issue precautionary measures, request information from the U.S. government, publish thematic reports, and issue country-specific resolutions. The IAJ intends to develop the IACHR as a parallel accountability pathway, particularly for cases where the UN treaty body process is slower or where the IACHR’s established jurisdiction over U.S. conduct offers procedural advantages.

International Cooperation and Persuading U.S. Compliance

The IAJ’s mandate includes working with other states, their NHRIs, and the international community to bring multilateral pressure to bear on U.S. treaty compliance — including through mechanisms that allow other States Parties to raise compliance concerns directly and to take action in international forums.

Inter-State Complaint Mechanisms

The United States has accepted the inter-state complaint procedure under ICCPR Article 41, which allows other States Parties to bring complaints before the Human Rights Committee where the U.S. has failed to fulfill its ICCPR obligations. The IAJ documents violations in a form designed to support such complaints and intends to make that documentation available to States Parties whose human rights concerns extend to conditions within the United States. The Genocide Convention and UNCAT similarly contemplate state-to-state accountability that the IAJ’s documentation is designed to facilitate.

Engaging the Six States That Objected to U.S. RUDs

Six European States Parties — Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden — formally objected to the United States’ Reservations, Understandings, and Declarations to UNCAT as incompatible with the Convention’s object and purpose. These states have a documented legal interest in U.S. treaty compliance. The IAJ’s analytical framework — demonstrating that the equivalence promise embedded in the U.S. RUDs has not been fulfilled — is directly relevant to those states’ legal positions. The IAJ intends to make its documentation and analysis available to those governments and their human rights ministries, and to work with civil society partners and NHRIs in those countries to ensure U.S. compliance failures are raised in multilateral forums with the authority of those states’ formal treaty objections behind them.

Working with Accredited NHRIs

NHRIs with GANHRI A-status have procedural standing before the UN Human Rights Council and treaty bodies that civil society organizations do not hold. The IAJ works within the international NHRI community — including through the IRCT’s network of member organizations in countries with accredited NHRIs — to ensure that the IAJ’s findings are incorporated into independent NHRI submissions that carry formal weight in UN proceedings. An accredited NHRI in a country with standing before the HRC can raise IAJ-documented U.S. violations in its own name with procedural authority the IAJ cannot yet exercise directly.

The Universal Periodic Review as a Current Priority

The U.S. government’s refusal to participate in its November 2025 UPR review, and the HRC’s decision to postpone that review to November 2026, creates an immediate opportunity. Civil society organizations that submitted shadow reports to the 2025 pre-session process have been invited by the OHCHR to submit updates. The IAJ intends to ensure that the 24 systemic factors identified in its September 2025 Shadow Report and the findings of its ongoing documentation are placed before the UPR Working Group in a form that allows member and observer states to make informed recommendations when the review proceeds.

The Long-Term Goal: A Self-Reinforcing International Accountability Architecture

The IAJ’s most ambitious international objective is the creation of a self-reinforcing accountability architecture in which: the CAT Committee’s Article 20 inquiry generates findings that inform the UPR; the UPR generates recommendations that states parties can enforce through inter-state complaints and bilateral diplomatic pressure; IACHR proceedings generate precautionary measures and reports that supplement the UN treaty body record; and the IRCT’s global network amplifies the IAJ’s findings in the countries whose governments are most likely to press the United States for compliance. No single mechanism is sufficient. The IAJ’s documentation and analysis are designed to feed all of them simultaneously, creating the kind of sustained, multi-channel international pressure that has historically produced reform in even the most resistant state systems.

Our Core Commitments

• Breadth of mandate. The IAJ investigates all forms of human rights violation by official conduct under all treaty frameworks applicable to the United States. No treaty is privileged over another; no category of rights is excluded.
• Independence. Entirely free of government control, judicial influence, and political direction. The IAJ sets its own investigative agenda on the basis of complaints received and evidence gathered.
• Methodological rigor. Istanbul Protocol (2022) standards applied to every investigation. Findings grounded in evidence, clinical methodology, and multi-treaty legal analysis — not advocacy or assertion.
• Epistemic precision. The IAJ distinguishes preliminary findings from verified conclusions, argued legal positions from settled doctrine, and independent expert evidence from case record documentation. Where legal questions remain contested, the IAJ says so.
• Rehabilitation as a goal. The IAJ proceeds from the conviction that persons who violate human rights can, when confronted with independent documentation and provided with education and standards, reform. Its communications with public officials are instruments of correction alongside instruments of accountability.

Disclaimer of Authority and Guarantees