ABSTRACT
Human rights is a major area of activity for today’s UN, but human rights NGOs still face challenges to their efforts to join UN politics. Joachim and Locher (in Chapter 1 of this volume) suggest that the pattern of challenges, and NGOs’ responses, may better be understood by examining access points, the aims and scope of their targeted institution, the profile of the institution’s membership, and the rules and norms of access. This chapter applies the framework to a general description of human rights NGOs’ activities at the UN, and explores a case study of NGOs’ participation in creating a new human rights treaty protocol: the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture (OPCAT) (UN General Assembly 2002).
