NGOs' contribution to the elaboration of international human rights law

The internship carried out at the Office of The High Commissioner for Human Rights made me conscious of the importance of NGOs for the functioning of Human Rights System. In the same way, some authors hold that the current Human Rights regulation would not exist as such, if NGOs did not participate in the different related processes.;Notwithstanding this reality, the fact is that there is not an appropriate regulation of the role of NGOs at the international level, and, what is more, there is not a process to elaborate it. The reasons of this situation have impelled the first steps of my research.;The present research is divided into two parts and a final section of conclusions. The first part deals with an historical development of the contribution of NGOs to the elaboration of the first Human Rights norms. It also contains an analysis of the situation of NGOs within the United Nations system and some reflections about the reasons of the inappropriate existing regulation and some foresights for the future.;The second part focuses on the contribution of NGOs to the elaboration of the norms that have been analysed. We distinguish two roles: NGOs as promoters of the regulation and as participants in the negotiation of these norms. In this sense, we are very interested in the analysis of their influence on the provisions of these norms.;According to this research, NGOs have contributed to the elaboration of important provisions of the norms that have been analysed: United Nations Charter, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Convention against torture, 1984, Convention on the rights of the Child, 1989, Convention on the prohibition of the use, stockpiling, production and transfer of anti-personnel mines and on their destruction, 1997 and Statute of the International Criminal Court, 1999. NGOs have acted in order to improve the content of these norms, and to achieve a best regulation of the protection of human rights.;We advocate for the establishment of a legal framework, as the basis for future ad hoc norms created by the UN in order to regulate future processes of elaboration of norms. This regulation would reinforce the current situation and would provide a greater juridical status for these organisations, that would be more appropriate to their real capacity.;For the sake of its own development, International Law shouldn't ignore the importance of these NGOs. Assuming that fact, International Law should undertake the search for the solution to a pending question: how to arbitrate an efficient cooperation with NGOs.