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9 Membership Rites and Statehood in the New Europe I f political transitions and new constitutions serve as key regulatory moments, pushing states to lock in commitments, then no wonder Europe joined the global bandwagon of NHRI diffusion after 1990. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, newly independent states in Eastern Europe moved to create NHRIs in the 1990s. Strikingly, country after country across Eastern Europe established an NHRI as part of either postindependence democratic institution building or constitutional reform; membership in the Council of Europe also proved crucial. While most Eastern European countries failed to meet international standards, a few significant exceptions existed: Russia, Bosnia, Georgia, Ukraine, and Albania. Western European countries that had not already done so also joined the global trend, including Belgium, Greece, the Netherlands, Cyprus, and Northern Ireland. Subregional diffusion was itself facilitated and reinforced by larger regional trends. The first meeting of European NHRIs was held in 1994 and the second in 1997, marking the formation of a network known as the European Group of NHRIs. The Council of Europe, moreover, issued two relevant resolutions in 1997: Resolution 14, which encouraged the establishment of NHRIs; and Resolution 11, which highlighted cooperation among NHRIs, member states, and the Council of Europe1 In practice, for many states, the creation of a human rights ombudsman became a condition of membership in European institutions. Compared to countries in the Global South, a few somewhat surprising trends are evident among European NHRIs. First, a large proportion of NHRIs in Europe are not fully accredited internationally; it is in fact the region of the world with the most B-status institutions. And some states with institutions commonly referred to as NHRIs, moreover, have never applied for international accreditation . Second, the issue of institutional redundancy is significant, as multiple and overlapping accountability structures exist within and across countries; and in many countries, a long delay has marked the period from when the idea of an NHRI was first introduced to when it actually began functioning. Third, the ombudsman model has been the region’s preferred type of NHRI, focused largely on individual complaints from national citizens. Finally, in the case of both consolidated democracies and democratizing states, domestic actors have often adopted a post–human rights ideology: the notion that human rights is already institutionalized within the state and therefore somehow irrelevant for today’s national debates. In other cases, the rejection has been far more subtle, revealing a deeper assumption that “human rights” constitutes a more appropriate frame of reference for states in other parts of the world—for them, but not us. To invoke Makau Mutua’s imagery, the European view stereotypically equates human rights abuses with savage acts of the Other rather than its own barbarities or its mundane degradations and marginalized communities. In still other instances , a human rights framework may have triggered fears of a revolutionary discourse, rooted in the historical memory of communism’s fall being driven ideologically, in small but not insignificant ways, by the discourse of human rights. As Russian ombudsman Oleg Mironov said of state officials, “They saw the human rights activists as the dissidents who led to the collapse of the Soviet system, to the demise of socialism.”2 In Europe, then, NHRIs have come to be part of an institutional checklist of requirements for statehood and/or regional membership in European institutions. The “checklist” has been diffused subregionally, as states have mimicked one another , and through region-wide directives and networks. That the regional system of NHRIs was developing alongside a global one, featuring some European NHRIs as leaders, also was significant. In the case of newly independent and democratizing states, regulatory moments were closely aligned with constitutionalism, external human rights obligations tended to be relatively new, and violence was typically low. In established democracies, NHRIs were adopted almost entirely in response to international regime pressures, leading to inordinately weak institutions. Newly Independent States in Eastern Europe NHRIs, especially the ombudsman, appealed to the new states of Eastern Europe . The attraction was not so much human rights, since that discourse was membership rites 257 often too embroiled in past struggles. Rather, an NHRI was appealing because it carried the promise of state transformation. For countries that were embarking on a project of state building in a new democratic context, a horizontal accountability institution resonated. A broader project of reconceptualizing national identity, moreover, tended to include a strong European dimension. And in this scheme, the ombudsman (or NHRI) symbolized statehood...

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