Forum shopping by non-state actors in international organizations

Abstract Non-state actors filing human rights complaints can often choose between international organizations. How does institution design shape these choices? We consider strategic forum shopping, arguing that individuals and NGOs select venues based on two key institutional features: whether decisions are legally binding and how long decisions take. We test this argument using original data on over 3,400 petitions filed in the Inter-American Human Rights System (IAHRS) and the UN Human Rights Committee (CCPR) over a period of forty years (1980–2020). We find that when states recognize the jurisdiction of an international court, making legally binding decisions possible, petitions to the IAHRS increase and petitions to the CCPR decrease. The two features trade off differently across actor types: NGOs are willing to tolerate lengthy processes in exchange for the prospect of binding, precedent-setting decisions, while individual victims are more sensitive to decision time and prefer the faster UN system. These findings show that overlapping institutions produce systematic sorting with important implications for the design, resilience, and enforcement capacity of the international human rights regime.