Abstract/Summary

This article examines how lying by state agents can violate human rights, including freedoms of opinion and expression, the right to health, and the right to participate in public affairs. The article argues that a lie – a statement, made by one person to another, that is untruthful and is made with the intention of deceiving the addressee – by a state agent can interfere with the interests of individuals protected by human rights law. Not all lies interfere with human rights, however. Whether they do so depends on the harms they cause. The article shows that lies that interfere with human rights can be justified only very exceptionally within the human rights framework, since they are most often motivated by an illegitimate purpose. The article also argues that human rights law will apply equally regardless of whether states lie to their own people or to peoples of other states. One purpose of this article is to conduct a mapping exercise, demonstrating the integral role that lies by state agents play in all kinds of human rights violations. The article also demonstrates how, in some instances, lies are a necessary condition for human rights violations, which cannot be committed without them – a good example here is that of states fabricating election results. In other cases, lies by state agents are a sufficient condition for a human rights violation. That is, the lie alone violates individual rights – systematic lying by state agents that pollutes the information space and thereby inhibits their people’s right to seek and receive information of all kinds is an example of such practice, as is the dissemination of lies that harm public health. International and regional human rights bodies, especially those acting in a judicial or quasi-judicial capacity, rarely accuse states of deliberately lying, or of otherwise acting in bad faith. This is understandable, for all sorts of practical and prudential reasons. The article is not arguing that human rights bodies or activists must change their approach radically. But neglecting the role that lying by states plays in human rights violations has consequences, as it impedes the ability of human rights bodies (or activists) to tell the truth about what the state concerned is really doing. Put differently, if human rights bodies avoid dealing with state lies and their consequences, they risk normalizing them. In a world in which an increasing number of states is led by rapacious liars, this is not a risk that we can afford to ignore.