Dear AHRI colleagues,

Welcome to 2022 and the first AHRI Newsletter of the year. As we continue to navigate the uncertainties of the COVID pandemic, we want to express our gratitude for the impressive efforts to organise events in the virtual world so that colleagues across our member institutes and beyond can continue to give voice to human rights challenges and progress across the globe in a forum that is more accessible to most. The increasing number of publications, seminars and events that you bring to us to share through this newsletter and our website is helping us strengthen our understanding of what different member institutes are up to and how we might plan for the future. 

That being said, we are greatly looking forward to, hopefully, meeting in person in September this year at AHRI 2022, which will be hosted by the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria. You can read more about the conference in the call for papers that is included here. We hope many of you are able to join us for some intensive human rights examination and the opportunity to have those ‘off-duty’ conversations which have inspired many exciting collaborations across the member institutes over the 22 years of AHRI. 

These ongoing discussions about human rights and how they can continue to evolve to give a voice to the most marginalised and the oppressed in their daily struggles are critical. This continues to be a driving force behind AHRI and we have no doubt that 2022 will see more impactful work carried out across the AHRI membership.

Until we have the opportunity to meet, we wish you all a productive year.

Kasey and Elaine

On behalf of the Global Justice Academy (University of Edinburgh) and the Centre for the Study of Human Rights Law (University of Strathclyde)

Your AHRI Secretariat

Conference of the Association of Human Rights Institutes (AHRI)

2-3 September 2022, Future Africa campus, University of Pretoria, South Africa (and online)

Technology and the future of human rights

 Call for papers

Technological developments have made what was once science fiction reality. This gives some hope for a utopian future while others get nightmares. It also highlights the extent to which technologies that are not explicitly designed with human rights and equity in mind have tremendous potential to do harm. 

In most societies companies monitor and monetize our activities online for profit and governments have tremendous capacity to monitor us both online and in the physical world. They generally do so in the name of public safety, but often with the goal of silencing dissenting voices and preventing people from organizing for structural changes within the economy and society. 

Covid-19 has led to misery around the globe but also illustrates how technological developments can make a difference, most significantly through the rapid developments of vaccines. However, there are serious inequities in making the fruits of technological developments such as vaccines globally available. Covid-19 has been not only a medical pandemic but also an inequality pandemic. The climate crisis also highlights global inequalities which equitable access to technological developments could potentially mitigate.

Accountability and public participation are central to the human rights project. Technological developments such as artificial intelligence has the potential to make justice systems more efficient, but human control remains essential. Technological advances are frequently used in elections and other forms of political participation but have often been challenged.

Abstracts

We have only highlighted a few issues that technological developments pose to human rights now and in the future. We invite anyone interested in these and related issues to send an abstract or panel proposal for consideration under the following tracks:

Track 1: Surveillance and vulnerability

Track 2 Survival and sustainability

Track 3: Democratic participation and accountability 

Abstracts on other human rights topics may also be submitted. 

Abstracts sent by doctoral students will be considered for tracks in the main conference but may also be selected for the doctoral workshop held on 1 September 2022; the day before the start of the main conference.

Abstracts should be maximum 300 words and submitted together with a max 100-word bio via Submittable, here. 

Deadline for submission of abstracts is 31 March 2022. Please indicate at the end of your abstract or panel proposal whether you intend to present in person or online. Selected presenters will be notified by 30 April 2022. 

 Limited funding for attendance in person may be available. If you would like to present in person, please indicate whether your personal attendance would be dependent on financial support from the organisers of the conference and, if such support will not be possible, if you would like to be considered for online presentation.

Conference website

The conference website will soon be available via www.chr.up.ac.za

Important dates

Deadline for submission of abstracts and panel suggestions: 31 March 2022

Registration opens: 31 March 2022

Notification of selected abstracts and panels: 30 April 2022

Venue

The conference will take place at the Future Africa Campus, University of Pretoria on Friday 2 September and Saturday 3 September 2022.  A doctoral workshop will be held on the main campus of the University of Pretoria on Thursday 1 September 2022. All events will be hybrid meaning participants can join in person or online.

The closest airport to Pretoria is OR Tambo International Airport from which participants can take the Gautrain to the Hatfield station. Alternatively, you can book a shuttle to take you from the airport to your hotel. Participants can also book rooms at the Future Africa campus, here, or in Hatfield.

Enquiries

Prof Magnus Killander, magnus.killander@up.ac.za

Organisers

The AHRI 2022 conference is organised by the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, South Africa, in collaboration with the Center for Human Rights Science, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, United States, and the Association of Human Rights Institutes (AHRI).

The Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, is an internationally recognised university-based institution combining academic excellence and effective activism to advance human rights, particularly in Africa. It aims to contribute to advancing human rights, through education, research and advocacy.  

The Centre for Human Rights Science at Carnegie Mellon University advances human rights by harnessing the power of science and technology for those fighting against inequities and abuses of power. It facilitates partnerships between academic researchers and human rights practitioners and provides technical assistance to individuals and organizations devoted to human rights.

FRA ( European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights) 

Selected recent publications:

• 17 December: December 2021 Update – Search and Rescue (SAR) operations in the Mediterranean and fundamental rights

• The Handbook on European non-discrimination law – 2018 edition is now also available in Swedish. The handbook examines European non-discrimination law from EU non-discrimination directives and the European Convention on Human Rights. It draws on them interchangeably when they overlap and highlights differences where these exist. It is also available in Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian and Spanish.

Selected upcoming publications:

• Strengthening guardianship for unaccompanied children

• Migration Bulletin – September-December 2021

• Handbook on European law relating to the rights of the child – Update 2021

• Charter e-guidance and case studies: translation of new online tools (currently available in EN here under Charter e-courses) into French

Selected recent events:

• December 2021: FRA hosted a webinar with the European Commission for its Fundamental Rights Platform (FRP) about the EU Rule of Law mechanism and related stakeholder consultation. The webinar on 7 December aimed to raise awareness about the mechanism and to encourage civil society organisations to contribute to the process. The consultation opened on 1 December and closes on 24 January 2022. Links to the presentations and webinar recording are available in FRA’s FRP library. 

• 17 and 18 January 2022: FRA took part in European Commission workshops aiming to help prepare a legislative proposal on binding standards for Equality Bodies. FRA drew on findings and opinions from its various publications. These include a study on strong and effective national human rights institutions – challenges, promising practices and opportunities and equality in the EU, 20 years on from the initial implementation of the equality directives. FRA also refers to its report on surveillance by intelligence services and data protection handbook. 

Selected upcoming event:

• 20 and 21 January: FRA contributes to CoE event on effective human rights training in EU Member States. FRA will present its Fundamental Rights Charter materials and tools. These include the Charter Handbook available in all official EU languages and its Charter e-learning courses for legal professionals.

Other information of interest:

• Check FRA publications here.

•  Check FRA news here.

• Subscribe to the FRA newsletter here.

Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice, Sheffield Hallam University, UK

China Cannot Silence Me

“Since the Chinese government began imprisoning an estimated million people, most of them Uyghurs, in mass-internment camps in the region, in 2017, the need to know that my mother is safe controls me”. Nyrola Elimä, the Helena Kennedy Centre Supply Chain Analyst and Researcher, in her powerful essay published by The New Yorker, speaks about the crimes committed against her family and other Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Read more here.  

• Vacancy: Doctoral Position in Peace and Development Research
• Call for Papers: Decolonising Global Migration Law
• Call for Applications: Human Rights Program at Central European University, Vienna
  
• Event: NQHR Online Workshop for Early Career Researchers:How do peer reviewers assess academic articles?
• Call for Applications: Helena Kennedy Centre Sanctuary Scholarship and The GREAT Scholarship for Justice and Law
• Call for Applications: Postdoctoral Fellowships

School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

Vacancy 

Deadline: February 28, 2022

The School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg advertises a doctoral position in Peace and Development Research – with a focus on legal mobilization in Sápmi. The doctoral position is affiliated with the research project “Litigating land rights in Sápmi: Indigenous legal mobilization in Finland, Norway and Sweden.”

For more information, click here.

Centre for Fundamental Rights, Hertie School Berlin, Germany

Call for Papers

Deadline: February 15, 2022

Decolonising Global Migration Law

The Centre for Fundamental Rights at the Hertie School, the European University Institute and the African Centre for Migration and Society at the University of Witwatersrand invite abstract submissions on post-/decolonial critiques of global migration law. 

The workshop, which will take place on June 10, 2022, aims to bring together a global group of scholars at various career stages (both established and early-career scholars, including advanced PhD students). We welcome submissions from legal scholars, and those studying law from other disciplinary vantage points, including law and development; legal history; and the sociology and politics (political philosophy, political science and IR) of global migration law. We welcome in particular papers that examine underexplored legal regimes and avoid Eurocentrism.

Interested participants should provide an abstract in Word format of no more than 500 words. Together with their abstracts, applicants should provide the following information: name, affiliation, the title of the proposed paper and an email address. To submit an abstract please write to fundamentalrights@hertie-school.org by 15 February 2022 with the heading ‘Submission Decolonising Migration Workshop’.

Further information can be found here.

Human Rights Program, Central European University, Austria

Call for Applications

Deadline: February 1, 2022

Apply for the Human Rights Program at Central European University, Vienna, Austria

The LLM/MA in Human Rights is a 1 year program combining theoretical and practical perspectives, these programs prepare you to make an impact in national, regional and international human rights protection. An internship program with local NGOs, a course at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and the Vienna Human Rights Model United Nations Conference offer unique experience-based learning opportunities.

Find out more here.

Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM)

Event

Deadline: February 9, 2022

NQHR Online Workshop for Early Career Researchers: How do peer reviewers assess academic articles?

How can you increase the chances of an academic article that you submit to a journal? What do peer reviewers pay attention to? What are dos and don’ts in terms of how you shape your article? These issues will be addressed in a special online workshop entitled ‘How do peer reviewers assess academic articles?’ on 9 February 2022.

As part of its 40th anniversary, the Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights (NQHR), one of the world’s leading human rights journals, organises a public online workshop on peer reviewing, geared towards starting researchers (PhD candidates and others) from any country in the world. The event aims to bring the crucial and enormous experience of those academics who review articles to those who are embarking on their academic paths of writing articles. Several peer reviewers from the NQHR’s International Board will share with early-career researchers their methods of peer reviewing, the dos and don’ts when it comes to writing and submitting academic articles for publications, and all other important insights, so that the attendees learn what they should pay attention to in an article so as to increase their chances of publication. Questions such as ‘What do peer reviewers value in articles?’ and ‘What should be avoided?’ will be introduced by ways of short pitches of three of the NQHR’s International Board Members, after which there is time for the online audience to ask questions. The workshop will be chaired by professor Antoine Buyse, editor-in-chief of the NQHR.

The following Board Members will share their experiences with assessing academic articles:

Ian Seiderman has served with the International Commission of Jurists from 2000-2005 and from 2008 to present. He served as Senior Legal Adviser for Amnesty International from 2005-2008. He has advised both organisations on a broad range of legal and policy questions in the areas of international human rights law and international humanitarian law. From 1994-1997, he was a legal assistant to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Sir Nigel Rodley. He also served as a researcher for the Netherlands Institute of Human rights and as a staff attorney with the US-based Central American Refugee Center.

Elina Pirjatanniemi works as a Professor of Constitutional and International Law as well as a Director of the Institute for Human Rights at Åbo Akademi. She has among others studied asylum and immigration law, human rights in the context of criminal law, human rights and societal change as well as the relation of national and international law. She has in-depth knowledge in issues relating to the EU’s Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ). 

Barbara Oomen holds a chair in the Sociology of Human Rights at Utrecht University. She works at University College Roosevelt, UU's Liberal Arts and Sciences College in Middelburg, where she was the Dean from 2012-2016. Her research concerns the interplay between law and society, with a special emphasis on human rights and cultural diversity. She leads the NWO Vici project Cities of Refuge and is involved in the Horizon2020 ETHOS research. In Utrecht, she is one of the leaders of the focus area on Migration and Societal Change.

The event takes place on 9 February at 15.00-16.00 (CET) on Microsoft Teams. Participation is free of charge, but we would kindly like to ask you to register using this link: https://fd21.formdesk.com/universiteitutrecht-rebo/rgl-peer-review-workshop . The Teams link to the event will be sent a couple of days prior to the workshop to everyone who has filled in the registration form.

Helena Kennedy Centre Sanctuary Scholarship

Sheffield Hallam University offers three Sanctuary Scholarships per academic year to support talented students who have sought asylum in the UK. One of them is the Helena Kennedy Centre Sanctuary Scholarship for MA or LLM Applied Human Rights course. 

Deadline: 19 April 2022, 23:55

Read more here. 

The GREAT Scholarship for Justice and Law

Deadline: May 31, 2022

The GREAT Scholarships for justice and law are jointly funded by Sheffield Hallam University with the UK government’s GREAT Britain campaign and the British Council. They are exclusively for students domiciled in Nigeria and India, starting one of the following full-time postgraduate taught courses in September 2022. The scholarship provides a £10,000 tuition fee waiver for the first year of study on one of the following courses: 

- MA Applied Human Rights
- LLM Applied Human Rights
- MSc Criminology and Criminal Justice
- LLM Legal Professional Practice

Deadline: 31 May 2022

Read more here.

Minerva Center for Human Rights, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

Call for Applications

February 20, 2022- March 1, 2022

Postdoctoral Fellowships at the Minerva Center for Human Rights at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The Minerva Center for Human Rights at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is pleased to announce two new calls for 2022-23 Postdoctoral Fellowships. 

The first is the Minerva Postdoctoral Fellowship in Transitional Justice. Note that two such Fellowships are available – one at our Center at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the other at our sister-Center at Tel-Aviv University – but there is one unified application procedure. Submission deadline for these Fellowships is February 20, 2022. The call can also be viewed here.

The second is the Minerva Angel Postdoctoral Fellowship for Research against Hate and Bigotry: This Fellowship is available only at our Center at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Submission deadline for this Fellowship is March 1, 2022. The call can also be viewed here.

Decisions on both Fellowships can be expected by the end of March 2022. 

• Call for Papers: Human Rights Education

• Call for Contributions: European Yearbook on Human Rights 2022

UCD Centre for Human Rights, Ireland

Call for Papers

Deadline: February 4, 2022

Lead Editor: Suzanne Egan

The recent rise of social movements such as Black Lives Matter, Fridays for Future and #MeToo has been one of the most potent forces of human rights mobilisation to have emerged at the global level in decades. At a time when the international human rights movement has come increasingly under fire for its colonial framing, excessive professionalisation and legalistic strategizing, attention has turned to the contrasting success of these grassroots movements in capturing public attention and empowering victims and communities to initiate social as well as legal change.

Human rights education (HRE) through diverse means - from public education initiatives, storytelling and engagement in formal and non-formal settings – has clearly been a critical factor in the evolution of these movements and in contributing to the success of their respective struggles. The involvement of young people in these movements has been particularly striking. At the same time, human rights mobilisation by NGOs and local voluntary sector groups in many countries (including single issue groups, local community groups, faith-based organisations, and charities) with varying degrees of formalisation and resources, is also evolving. Such groups and organisations regularly engage in both formal and informal HRE initiatives. Their aims include raising awareness of current social problems, community empowerment, to building a culture of human rights. NGOs and grassroots organisations have also played a crucial role over many years in helping to develop the HRE policies and programmes of international organisations such as the UN and the Council of Europe. 

While scholarship on HRE includes consideration of the evolution and practice of HRE by NGOs and grassroots organisations, theoretical and empirical literature in the field focuses predominantly on HRE in formal settings, particularly in schools. Yet much can be learned from the wide range of HRE practices engaged in by NGOs and grassroots organisations, as well as the challenges encountered by such groups in meaningfully engaging HRE as a tool of activism that can serve to inform the theory and practice of HRE in multiple contexts. HRER has, to date, included only a few examples of such work (see Hall, 2019; Bittar, 2020).

For this special issue of Human Rights Education Review, we encourage papers from a range of perspectives and from different national and international contexts to address this gap in the literature. To this end, we invite empirical research articles, case studies, and conceptual articles covering, but not limited to:

• The role of HRE as a tool of grassroots human rights activism at local and global levels
• Methodologies and pedagogies of HRE in grassroots campaigns
• Human rights education and the digital space 
• The contribution of grassroots organisations to the conceptual and institutional development of HRE
• Challenges in implementing HRE in non-formal settings
• Human rights activism in the formal education sector
• HRE and youth activism.

Please send an extended abstract of no more than 250 words to Managing Editor Marta Stachurska-Kounta at marta.m.stachurska-kounta@usn.no with the email subject line: HRER Special Edition HRE and Grassroots Activism by 4 February 2022. Abstracts will be reviewed and the authors informed no later than 25 February 2022 if we would like to invite the full paper for review. All invited manuscripts will be subject to double-blind peer review. Full manuscripts are due by 29 April 2022, and the Special Issue will be published in Vol 6(1) in January 2023.

European Training and Research Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, University of Graz, Austria

Call for Contributions

Deadline: March, 2022

European Yearbook on Human Rights 2022

The European Yearbook on Human Rights is shedding light on current human rights topics of concern and the most pressing issues that impair human rights protection, the rule of law and democracy in Europe and beyond. With special sections dedicated to the three main organisations securing human rights in Europe (EU, Council of Europe and OSCE) as well as a section on cross-cutting issues the Yearbook provides much-needed analysis and insightful commentary. 

The Yearbook is supported by three major Austrian human rights institutions dedicating their work to researching, teaching and promoting human rights – the European Training and Research Centre for Human Rights and Democracy of the University of Graz, the Austrian Human Rights Institute of the University of Salzburg and the Vienna Forum for Democracy and Human Rights – and the Global Campus of Human Rights, Venice. It is published by Intersentia and all contributions are subject to a double-blind review process ensuring the highest academic standards.

We welcome submissions concerning human rights developments within the major European institutions namely the EU, the CoE and the OSCE. Articles concerning a topic not related to one of the aforementioned institutions but dealing with current and topical human rights developments will be taken into consideration as well. 

Authors will be invited to submit full contributions based on an abstract (max 500 words) that should be send by 15 December 2020. Abstracts should be submitted with a short bio to lisa.heschl@uni-graz.at. 

The deadline for submitting the manuscript is end of March 2022.

For further information on the European Yearbook on Human Rights, click here.