Hard Protection through Soft Courts? Non-Refoulement before the United Nations Treaty Bodies | German Law Journal | open access. For this piece we reviewed over 500 decisions from UNTBs between 1990-2020. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/german-law-journal/article/hard-protection-through-soft-courts-nonrefoulement-before-the-united-nations-treaty-bodies/ECC8BF6783058183A59A5D06DF74E036

It took us over a year to create and code the dataset. We were particularly curious to test the assumption shared by many practitioners who hold that ‘soft courts’ are likely to be more activist and progressive than hard courts in the human rights field.

Our findings do not confirm this in the case law non-refoulement case law of UN treaty bodies. Although we note that CAT and the CRC are more progressive than HRC and CEDAW wie it comes to the interpretation of non refoulement.

Our findings generate important insights into supranational accountability mechanisms for non-refoulement violations. More and more migrants and refugees in Europe turn to UN treaty bodies. These institutions play important roles as soft courts.