By any criterion, Australia’s international human rights policy between 1996 and 2000 was fraught with contradiction. On the one hand, the Coalition government reversed decades of myopia by actively supporting self-determination for the people of East Timor, and was commended by the UN Secretary-General as a leading facilitator of the UN’s new regional strategy for enforcing the principle of humanitarian intervention. On the other hand, it adopted a regressive stance towards the traditional emphases of post-1972 Australian human rights policy by rejecting multilateralism, bipartisanship, self-criticism, and the right of UN human rights bodies to monitor Australia’s human rights conditions. Critical to this regressive mood was the government’s inability to become reconciled with the indigenous population and to respond to its demands for a national apology to the Stolen Generations of Aboriginal children.

A framework that incorporates children as stakeholders in the social justice process should be rooted in a foundational understanding of the political structures, dynamics, and language around advocacy for children both within countries and across the international system. This chapter provides that foundation by identifying how the complex interaction of state governments and the international human rights regime shapes potential for child advocacy. Additionally, it clarifies key child rights and areas of conflict between articulated rights. Finally, it demonstrates the overlapping roles and responsibilities of the various levels of actors responsible for child advocacy internationally.

Chapter 8 concludes by discussing the book's broader implications. I begin by providing a brief summary of my main argument and findings. I then compare the findings across Europe and the Americas and provide possible explanations for the divergent effects. I then turn to the role of regional human rights courts in the international human rights regime. In doing so, I consider the implications of the book's findings for designing effective international human rights institutions as well as the design of regional human rights arrangements. I conclude by highlighting several avenues for future research, including examining general deterrence more carefully, the role of strategic regional judicial behavior, the potential for complementarity or competition among institutions in the international human rights regime, and backlash in the international human rights regime.

This chapter frames the discussion that follows by examining the concept of populism, which is debated among political scientists, and the negative effects that populism may produce on internationally recognized human rights. The chapter emphasizes an understanding of populism as a form of politics that employs an exclusionary notion of the people as opposed to disfavored groups that are unworthy and that purports to rule on behalf of the people, whose will should not be constrained. The chapter describes both internal and external effects of populists' rise to power. Domestically, populist governance threatens the human rights of the excluded group, but also poses danger for members of the majority, as leaders seek to entrench themselves in power and undermine checks. Externally, the influence of populism on foreign policy reduces support for the international human rights regime, in a manner that has become increasingly problematic as populists gain power in more countries that previously played key roles in maintaining it.