ABSTRACT
This chapter explains extensive organisation-building efforts within the OAS, the erection of a commission and then a court to defend human rights, and extensive discussion and ultimate agreement on a detailed account of freedom of expression. The chapter argues that the social influence processes deployed were unsuccessful. The positioning of the chapter, as the second of three empirical studies, is deliberate as it explores the gap between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) weak commitments and the European Union’s (EU) strong, legalised standards. Early OAS commitments to human rights were broad and imprecise, just as ASEAN’s would be some 50 years later. The relationship between Panama and the Organization of American States (OAS) is a vital link in shaping the framework to explain how socialisation, membership, and regional organisations intersect. The institutional and legal development of the OAS as represented in the establishment of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in 1959 and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in 1979.
