News
New publication: Human Rights Politics
Michael Krennerich’s book “Human Rights Politics. An introduction” has just been published – also available as Open Access.
The book introduces the diversity of topics, actors, and institutions involved in human rights politics and shows how political science and related disciplines can help to organize the field of research and (more) systematically describe and examine the complex reality of human rights politics.
Recent Posts
- Climate Change as a Social and Political Issue: What Happens to Those Displaced by Climate Change, and Who Are They?
- New publication: Human Rights Politics
- The right to truth and justice – why do the archives of Chile’s National Commission on Political Prisoners and Torture remain secret for 50 years?
- Heiner Bielefeldt “Sources of Solidarity : A Short Introduction to the Foundations of Human Rights”
- The persecution of Hedme Castro continues in Honduras – call for donations
- The Dangers of Sexist Rhetoric on Social Media (2016-2021)
- Marking the 30th Anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child
- Ensuring gender equality in post-conflict reconstruction: Three primary challenges and corresponding approaches
- Towards a Truth and Reconciliation Commission for the former Yugoslavia
- Brazil’s clandestine mass grave in Perus (São Paulo)
Understanding Human Rights
The Shelter City Project
In many countries around the world, human rights defenders are persecuted for their work and convictions. They are put under surveillance, threatened, harassed, and detained arbitrarily; often, they face enforced disappearance, torture, and even death. One of the organizations concerned with the protection of human rights defenders is the Dutch NGO Justice & Peace. In 2012, the organization founded the program Shelter City. Under the program, human rights defenders are offered temporary protection for three months in a Dutch city. In this time, they can recover and resume their work in peace.
Social Rights
Climate Change as a Social and Political Issue: What Happens to Those Displaced by Climate Change, and Who Are They?
In 2013, a family from the small Pacific Island country of Kiribati left their home in Tarawa, Kiribati and headed to New Zealand. Ioane Teitiota and his family became the first to apply for refugee status due to the impacts of climate change – stating that climate change had created unsuitable living conditions in Kiribati and had devastated the island so much that it was no longer safe for them to live there. A primary concern of Teitiota and other I-Kiribati is sea level rise, seeing as the islands of Kiribati sit only 2 – 3 meters above sea level. Kiribati is just one country and community out of many impacted by climate change in this way. The story of Kiribati is familiar in nearby islands, including Tuvalu, Fiji, Tonga, and others. The Pacific islands make up only 0.03% of global emissions, yet they continue to bear the brunt of the impacts, and they remain as one region in the forefront of the climate crisis. In turn, people are displaced from their communities either by force or necessity – and this phenomenon is not unique to the Pacific.
International Criminal Law
Towards a Truth and Reconciliation Commission for the former Yugoslavia
The purpose of this article is to elaborate on the need for, and the prospect of, establishing a Truth and Reconciliation Commission for the former Yugoslavia. The ratio for such a commission has much to do with the failings of the Yugoslav Tribunal to realize its didactic purposes to its fullest potential, a consequence of anti-Tribunal propaganda and the inability to generate a form of truth that would serve as an adequate basis for post-conflict reconciliation. Following the outlining of these shortcomings, this paper shall assess some of the past and more recent attempts aimed towards the formation of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission within the former Yugoslav states.
Regions
The right to truth and justice – why do the archives of Chile’s National Commission on Political Prisoners and Torture remain secret for 50 years?
This question is examined by Chilean laywer Felipe Téllez, who draws the conclusion that the law which imposes the restriction of access needs to be changed, at least in order to grant judicial bodies access to relevant information in order to help with their investigations.
Projects
From Nuremberg to The Hague – The Road to the International Criminal Court
The stony path from The Nuremberg Trial 60 years ago, when those primarily responsible for the war and war crimes in Germany had to answer for their actions, to finally establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2002 is presented in an exhibition, which was inaugurated on October 2, 2006 in The Hague.