@inproceedings{01J7ZX1N4PF7VBTB2TRKMGA040,
  abstract     = {{The denial of environmental defenders’ access to state-held information on environmental impacts associated with forestry exploitation projects, and prosecutions on defamation charges against them for questioning, through declarations and opinions, public official’s influence peddling for promoting logging projects to the detriment of the environment, has posed serious obstacles to public debate on environmental issues in Chile. These include the fact that these social actors were prevented from promoting the discussion on environmental-related issues, and as a consequence, little or no circulation of ideas and opinions existed thereon among the public.
To tackle these infringements, the Public Interest and Human Rights Legal Clinic of the Diego Portales University (“Legal Clinic”) legally represented the environmental defenders concerned in the only two cases that have reached the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR), Claude Reyes (2009) and Barona Bray (2022), for breaches of the above-mentioned dimensions of the right to freedom of expression, respectively. In addition, some non-governmental organisations (NGOs) also supported victims' claims by means of amicus curiae briefs, with the oldest case receiving the largest number of submissions.
Yet this contribution argues that while all participating NGOs influenced how the IACtHR interpreted and applied the international norm enshrining the right in question, the extent of this influence varies according to the role played by the NGOs themselves. To discuss this preliminary hypothesis, it combines literature review with content analysis of court files, including IACtHR’s judgements, in both contentious cases.  
The findings will show that depending on the role NGOs played in the litigation process, they sought to shape IACtHR’s interpretation of certain aspects of the legal norm, and that this last point is decisive in establishing how their influence, and thus its extent, differs. While third parties’ interventions intended, and usually achieved, to contour IACtHR’s understanding of the normative content of the right to freedom of expression, including who constitutes an environmental defender, the Legal Clinic strategically steered IACtHR’s determination of the applicability of the restrictions placed upon the exercise of this right. By doing so, victims’ representatives wielded a major influence because it shaped how this regional court managed the inherent tensions between environmental defenders’ exercise of this freedom, on the one hand, and the (apparently necessary) protection of business information relating to forestry projects/honour of the public officials, on the other.}},
  author       = {{Luque Macias, Maria}},
  booktitle    = {{Annual Conference of the Association of Human Rights Institutes (AHRI 2024), Abstracts}},
  keywords     = {{Right to Freedom of Expression,American Convention on Human Rights,Environmental Defenders,NGOs,Inter-American Court,HRC,MSCA}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  location     = {{Lund, Sweden}},
  title        = {{The different influence exercised by NGOs on IACtHR’s interpretation of environmental defenders’ right to freedom of expression}},
  year         = {{2024}},
}