ABSTRACT
The previous chapter identified the current scope of human rights, which comprises civil, political, economic, social, cultural, and solidarity rights, along with their associated positive and negative dimensions. This delineation of rights categories and dimensions was followed by a brief descriptive account and portrayal of the extant international law and regional systems for the promotion and protection of human rights from which a full list of rights can be ‘read’ from the various articles of the various human rights instruments. In building on this general mapping of the extant scope of human rights to be protected, this chapter outlines the main actors, organizations, and institutions whose actions, structures, and behaviour may have a direct or indirect impact on human rights. Direct impact involves either (or both) the significant capacity or (and) the legal obligation to protect human rights, while indirect impact may come from those organizations and actors whose activities are not self-consciously concerned with the protection of human rights, but owing to their significance as an actor may have rights implications. Such impacts may be positive or negative, which may vary across these different actors and may vary across different periods of time. Actors that were conceived as antithetical to the protection of human rights may over time emerge as essential to their protection, while those seen as essential to rights protection may become less so. In order to understand better these different actors, organizations, institutions and the ways in which we can conceive of their having a relationship with the promotion and protection of human rights, the chapter groups them into their respective organizational fields.
