The regional human rights system of the League of Arab States (LAS) remains one of the least investigated in international human rights law. Using mixed research methodologies (doctrinal and interdisciplinary socio-legal research), this study assesses the added value of the 2004 Arab Charter on Human Rights to the effective legal protection of human rights in the Arab world. Embedded at the intersection of domestic, regional and international law, this thesis examines the interpretation and application of human rights law around three comparative dimensions. The first dimension is state-centric and provides a comparison of the pluralistic legal systems in Arab states, a comparison of human rights codification in Arab constitutions and statutory laws, as well as a comparison of the positions of Arab states towards international and regional human rights instruments. The second dimension focuses on the doctrinal comparison of the provisions of the Arab Charter with provisions of the other regional human rights treaties in Europe, the Americas and Africa and selected international human rights instruments. The third dimension compares the scope and quality of concluding observations and recommendations made by the Arab Human Rights Committee, the treaty body of the Arab Charter, with selected international human rights treaty body reports. The comparatively large number of reservations submitted by Arab states to the human rights treaties they have ratified, the structural deficiencies of the LAS human rights system, the incompatibility of many provisions in the Arab Charter with international human rights standards, and the weak competences of the Arab Committee lead to the conclusion that Arab states have consistently been using their membership in international/regional human rights systems to fend off unwanted interferences in their national sovereignty. The contribution the Arab human rights system has brought to the legal protection of human rights in Arab states is therefore rather limited.