Shadows across the Path 447strictly speaking, a court. But in its consideration of individual allegations of
violations of the covenant, it operated eff ectively in a judicial capacity. In the
early years, the number of states that adhered to this protocol was modest,
but it grew steadily over time, so that by 2012 over 110 states were parties to
it. Similarly, case law was slow to emerge, but by the 1990s, it was growing
into a torrent.
Th ere was analogous provision for individual applications against states
under the Convention against Torture of 1984. Th is established a body
called the Committee against Torture to adjudicate the claims. Other trea-
ties that provided for individual claims included the Conventions on Racial
Discrimination (of 1966), on Discrimination against Women (of 1979), and
on Rights of Disabled Persons (of 2006). In 2008, provision was made for
an individual- application procedure for the Covenant on Economic, Social,
and Cultural Rights. It entered into force in 2013.
Th ere were specialized human- rights tribunals at the regional level, too.
Th e fi rst one was the Eu ro pe an Court of Human Rights, established in 1959
and situated in Strasbourg. Its function was to adjudicate claims made un-
der the Eu ro pe an Convention on Human Rights (concluded in 1950). It
was only from the 1980s, though, that the Court had a caseload of signifi -
cant size. A similar body in the Western Hemi sphere, the Inter- American
Court of Human Rights, located in San José, Costa Rica, was set up in 1979,
to decide claims under t he America n Convention on Huma n R ights (dra ft ed
ten years earlier). An African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights
began operation in Banjul, Gambia in 1986, on the basis of an African Char-
ter of Human and Peoples’ Rights concluded fi ve years previously. Th is
was bolstered by an African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which
began operation in 2006 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, although its seat was
soon moved to Arusha, Tanzania. As of the end of 2012, however, only six
countries had opted to allow individual applications to be brought against
them in the Court.
In combination, the output of these various human- rights tribunals was
prodigious. Th e result was that the international law of human rights be-
came im mensely rich and detailed. Lauterpacht would have been both grati-
fi ed and amazed at this development. (He did not live to see it, as he died in
1960.) Even more amazing, though, was the fulfi llment, in the 1990s, of an-
other long- held aspiration, in the fi eld of international criminal law.