Sociolegal Dimensions of Local Human Rights Institutions: Challenges and opportunities for human rights claimants in the Deep South region of the United States

As a work of activist scholarship, this work centred the experiences and claims of local actors engaging in grassroots human rights practice in order to assess the performance of established local human rights institutions in the Deep South of the United States. Using a grounded theory approach, this work presented an assessment of local human rights institutions relative to standards outlined in the Paris Principles. I then interviewed local human rights advocates in order to determine whether the institutions assessed were responsive to their claims and complaints and presented their responses regarding why these institutions were not able to address their needs. Political interference, neoliberal policies, a lack of commitment to certain categories of rights, low levels of public trust for institutions, and systemic racism and implicit bias were proposed by interviewees as key factors that informed and restricted the effective functioning of these local bodies. Interviewees then made specific policy recommendations relative to reforming such institutions, which were presented. This thesis hopes to add to recent scholarship on local human rights institutions, white hegemony, and US behaviour in its domestic human rights practice.