The Emergence of the Inter-American Public Defender

This paper examines the figure of the Inter-American Public Defender, established in the 2009 reform of the IAHR Court’s Rules of Procedure. It discusses its scope and range of action, and its relationship with other international courts’ legal provisions. It then looks at the institutional arrangements between the Inter-American Court and the Inter-American Association of Public Defenders offices (AIDEF), which enabled the provision of public defenders in the proceedings before the Inter-American Court, their selection criteria and the mechanisms for the assignment of cases, in connection with the public defender’s first interventions. Finally, it addresses the public defender’s main challenges in the Inter-American human rights system.