The Strategic Litigation Working Group (SLWG) recognizes that effective implementation of human rights decisions is as important as securing a successful case outcome. However, implementation remains a chronic challenge in every region of the world, with States often failing to comply with decisions in practice. The SLWG creates spaces for members to exchange implementation experiences and explore structural and contextual reasons for non-compliance. We take targeted action to support communities, lawyers, other advocates, and decision-making bodies in adopting and advancing effective implementation practices. Our collective action focuses on:
- Promoting implementation of positive decisions: Members work collectively to advance full and prompt implementation of positive ESCER decisions, pursuing avenues for follow-up legal engagement post-ruling, along with media and other complementary forms of advocacy in emblematic or strategic cases.
- Sharing experiences and successful implementation strategies: SLWG members collect and share information about implementation experience and strategies through ongoing discussions, strategizing around specific cases and caselaw summaries (see the ‘enforcement’ section of each summary on our caselaw database).
- Engaging with decision-making bodies: SLWG supports the independence and functioning of human rights bodies while engaging with them to encourage progressive, participatory, and effective adjudicatory and enforcement practices and outcomes, including exchanges regarding access to justice and enforcement. SLWG members meet with human rights decision-makers at the regional and international levels in order to understand how they consider cases and follow up on their decisions, and encourage them to adopt working methods that support effective implementation.
