ABSTRACT
The United Nations opted to have thematic mechanisms as an answer to the crisis of multi-lateral treaties’ guarantees when states do not want to accept it or adopt it. Since the adoption of the Special Procedure on human rights defenders, there has been other Rapporteurships developed in the Inter-American and African system in order to guarantee the rights and protection of human rights defenders. These institutional guarantees coexist with judiciary guarantees under the controversial rule of non-duplication of procedures. At the core of this system emerges the paradigm of human condition protected universally under the UN thematic mechanisms and the regional human rights systems for human rights defenders. The human condition is the paradigm at the axiological basis of this new active subject of law, not merely based on individualism, but also on the active exercise of the right to promote and protect human rights. Consequently, the notion of a citizen as a subject of law is evolving toward a broader concept—human rights defenders—with the convergence of multilevel legal orders. Without a closed definition of human rights defender, the right to promote and to protect human rights might make it possible to overcome the paradoxes of citizen’s rights.
