ABSTRACT
Civil society organisations deploy human rights law every day. It is a weapon of choice for holding governments and others to account for human rights violations. Of course there will be appeals to the values that underpin human rights, such as respect for human dignity and demands for democracy and transparency, but the contemporary normative framework is heavily reliant on human rights law. In some circumstances there will be formal requirements for a civil society organisations (CSOs) to be allowed to participate in a particular process. For example, in multistakeholder initiatives, such as those relating to ‘Better Cotton’ or human rights principles for private security companies, CSOs may be defined in order to limit the pool of eligible organisations. Similarly, some intergovernmental regimes have limited which organisations may bring complaints of violations of particular international human rights.
