Vicious Cycle: Violations of Foreign Nationals’ Rights among CAT Countries

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explains abuse of foreigners’ rights by identifying an unexplored by-product of human rights shaming—reciprocation. By identifying this phenomenon, the article explains countries’ noncompliance with treaty obligations, focusing in particular on noncompliance with the Convention against Torture's (CAT) provisions on foreign nationals’ rights. States who learn about violations of their citizens’ rights in other ratifying countries violate foreigners’ rights at home. The article hypothesizes that the likelihood of violations of foreign nationals’ rights in a country is positively associated with mentions of violations of that country's citizens’ rights in other treaty countries. To test these propositions, the article presents new data on countries’ violations of foreign nationals’ human rights as documented in the CAT Treaty Body's reports. The results of rare events logistic regression analysis support the hypothesis. Conceptualizing this dynamic among CAT countries as negative diffuse reciprocity, the article draws theoretical conclusions and policy implications.