Scheme for alumni to audit summer elective classes of the MSt/MSc* in International Human Rights Law

Tutor: Elizabeth Umlas, Lecturer at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, an independent researcher and consultant with 20 years of experience in the field of business and human rights

Course objectives

This seminar introduces students to the rapidly developing field of business and human rights. A global consensus has grown in recent years that, at the same time that States have a duty to protect human rights, business has a responsibility to respect these rights. According to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (or GPs, which were endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council in 2011), the corporate responsibility to respect means, at a minimum, that businesses do not infringe on human rights (whether those of workers, local communities, customers or others), and if they do, that they address their adverse impacts. The question is no longer whether companies and other enterprises must uphold this responsibility: it is how they should do so, and how they can be held accountable when they do not.

The course examines the evolution of the field of business and human rights (BHR) and seeks to provide a foundation for understanding both the recent developments and progress made at the international level and the weaknesses and gaps in the international framework that is taking shape around BHR. It also seeks to explore areas and issues that pose particular challenges to holding companies accountable for their impact on human rights; to understand how companies affect human rights in these situations; and to critique some of the mechanisms, initiatives and principles, judicial and non-judicial, that have emerged to address these impacts. Overall, the course aims to provide students with a framework that will help them make sense of the complex relationship between business and human rights. Although the term “business” encompasses a wide range of private sector entities, including small and medium enterprises and national companies, this course will focus on multinational corporations (MNCs), mainly because much of the focus in the field of business and human rights has been on this form of enterprise and because they provide ready examples of the complexities that we will examine.

Course scope

The course begins with a review of the international debate on the corporate responsibility to respect human rights, and traces the emergence, within the United Nations, of a new framework on business and human rights. In the years since the GPs were endorsed, a key critique from major human rights organizations and legal scholars has been that, despite the progress the GPs have brought, many survivors of corporate-related human rights abuses still lack access to justice. In fact, some critics have claimed that the third pillar of the UN Protect, Respect & Remedy framework – “access to remedy” – is the weakest one. In the second part of the course, we will therefore explore selected accountability mechanisms at the international, national and local or company levels. We start by looking at a draft international treaty on business and human rights, which is meant to address gaps in access to remedy that exist at the international and national levels. We will also discuss legislation on mandatory human rights due diligence (“mHRDD”) that is emerging in several jurisdictions. We then spend two sessions looking at a selection of existing measures and mechanisms, both judicial and non-judicial, through which corporations might be held accountable in some measure for their impact on human rights. These include transnational litigation and enterprise-level grievance mechanisms. 

Next we focus on two areas that pose particularly difficult challenges in relation to human rights (extractive industries and renewable energy and their impact on Indigenous peoples; and global supply chains and violations of the rights of workers in these supply chains.) We examine key issues and explore how civil society organizations, governments, companies themselves, as well as workers and Indigenous communities, have sought to address these. The seminar concludes with a discussion of an approach from within the private sector itself – sustainable or responsible investment – and the implications of this approach for strengthening corporate responsibility to respect human rights. The final session is reserved for revision. 

This course explores both theory and practice, and students will have the opportunity to discuss and debate actual cases that demonstrate the complexities found at the intersection of business and human rights.

Tutor: Patricia Sellers Viseur, International criminal lawyer and Special Adviser on Slavery Crimes to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court

Course objectives

This survey course of international criminal law emphasizes the historical development of the modern “system” of international courts and tribunals. The course has several objectives. First, it is intended to impart a critical appreciation of the evolution of international criminal law and international humanitarian law by appraising the legal heritage of World War I and II, especially the International Military Tribunals of Nuremberg and Tokyo. The international judicial institutions, such as the International Criminal Court, the ad hoc Tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda and the internationalized Courts of Sierra Leone and Cambodia are the descendants of the international military tribunals. Nevertheless, the modern courts are creatures of their time, and as such, are bound by their constitutive Statutes and their institutional mechanisms. The second and foremost objective of this course is to examine the substantive contours of the international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression. The evolutionary trajectory of international criminal justice is most evident in the crystallization, codification, and application of international criminal law and international humanitarian law. The identification of governing legal doctrines and the intersection of human rights law and international criminal law will be discussed. Likewise, the modes of individual liability applicable to international crimes, such as superior responsibility, joint criminal enterprise or co-perpetration and aiding and abetting, will be studied critically.

The third objective is to read excerpts from seminal international criminal case law with the aim to gain familiarity with the judicial reasoning that has advanced the field of international criminal law. The course will tackle issues behind which judges united and those that have left the judiciary divided. The exploration of the modern case law will include; the International Criminal Court’s judgments in the Prosecutor v. Lubanga, the Prosecutor v. Bosco Ntaganda and the Prosecutor v. Bemba; the Special Court for Sierra Leone’s jurisprudence in the Prosecutor v. Charles Taylor; the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia’s jurisprudence in the Prosecutor v. Karadzic and the Prosecutor v. Krstić, the Prosecutor v. Djordević, and; the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda’s jurisprudence in the Prosecutor v. Nahimana and the Prosecutor v. Karemera; and the Extraordinary Criminal Chambers of Cambodia’s Prosecutor v. Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch. Selective legal articles and instructive materials will supplement the exploration of modern cases.

Course scope

The course starts by retracing the modern bases of international humanitarian law as in The Fourth Hague Convention of 1907. Thereafter, review of the attempt to create an international tribunal at the end of World War I will allow students to contemplate the “missed” opportunities to implement the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles that explicitly sought judicial redress of wartime atrocities. The recitation of war crimes, the proposals of new international crimes and the introduction of new doctrinal approaches to international criminal law will be garnered from the 1919 Report of the War Commission. Students will learn about the international community’s early views concerning head of state immunity, defenses of superior orders, breaches of the peace as well as the nascent contours of crimes against humanity. The Leipzig war crime prosecution of the Dover Castle case will be discussed. Subsequently, the milestone establishment of the WWII Nuremberg and Tokyo International Military Tribunals, replete with their governing Charters, will be studied. Significant parts of the judgments of each of the International Military Tribunals will be assessed through a historical lens that observes the systemic or structural criminal nature of what were termed “the total wars” in Europe and in Asia during the mid-20th century. Also, students will read excerpts from the subsequent military trials that were held for minor defendants in both theaters of war.

The second section of the course concentrates on the creation of modern international criminal judicial institutions. The International Criminal Court’s Rome Statute and the statutes of the ad hoc International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, together with that of the Special Court for Sierra Leone will be compared and contemplated. The jurisprudence of these courts and tribunals along with that of the Extraordinary Chamber of the Cambodian Court will serve to introduce students to a more detailed exposé of current issues status in international criminal law. Case law excerpts dealing with the substantive holdings on war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity and an examination of the requirements of the crime of aggression will inform the discussions. The application of doctrines of individual criminal responsibility such as joint criminal enterprise and superior responsibility assist our analysis of the evolving, modern international criminal law jurisprudence. The second hour of the last session is reserved for a general review of the course material.

Tutor: Ahmed Shaheed, Professor of Human Rights at Essex Law School, UK and Senior Fellow at Raoul Wallenberg Human Rights Centre

Course scope

International human rights law norms and mechanisms are predicated on the idea that they will bring about sustainable change at home, at the national level. The international mechanisms for the promotion, protection and respect of human rights are there to lend impetus and accountability until such a time that these legal standards are adequately protected domestically. Though international and regional mechanisms will always hold utility, one may expect that their need and workload should diminish over time as the burden shifts to national implementation and, indeed, human rights becoming embedded domestically.

The means by which such shifts have and may occur, however, is the subject of a growing literature which we will seek to interrogate in this course. In the first section we will examine various theories, models and means of bringing about human rights change before turning to the second section and exploring the domestication of human rights law.

The course will not consider the impact of regional human rights systems on domestication, the domestication of international criminal law or the application of international human rights standards extraterritorially, as these are topics that are explored elsewhere in the MSc offerings.

Course objectives

• To develop a highly critical and in-depth understanding of how international human rights law impacts on domestic law and practice;
• To critically analyse and evaluate various theories, models and means of how international human rights movement and international human rights machinery produce and sustain change at the domestic level;
• To develop a strong and sophisticated awareness of how a variety of domestic and the international actors and vectors interact in the human rights ecosystem to advance or undermine respect for human rights law;
• To demonstrate an advanced ability to identify effective strategies at the national, international and transnational levels that can maximise compliance with international huma rights standards.

Tutor: John Knox, Professor of International Law at Wake Forest University, USA

Course objectives

This course will introduce and explore the main concepts, laws, institutions, and policies at the intersection of international human rights law and environmental protection.

The course has several objectives, including to:

1. provide an overview of the conceptual architecture of international environmental law;
2. explore the effects of environmental harm on the enjoyment of human rights, and the obligations of States under human rights law to protect against such harm; and
3. consider the application of human rights law to two global environmental threats: the loss of biodiversity and climate change. 

Overall, the course is intended to provide participants with a framework for understanding and applying human rights law to environmental challenges.

Course scope

The course begins with an introduction to the architecture of international environmental law. In the first three sessions, participants will explore the major types of international environmental problems and the main tools available to address them, trace the evolution of international environmental law, and analyze issues of compliance and enforcement. This discussion will enable a more insightful examination of the points of intersection and divergence between international environmental law and international human rights law. 

In the next five sessions, participants will discuss the ways that environmental protection can be articulated in the language of human rights. They will examine the “greening” of human rights to life, health, and property, among other rights, which has given rise to a detailed body of environmental human rights law; consider the human right to a healthy environment as it has been adopted at national and international levels; and discuss the movement to recognize “rights of nature.”  

The final three substantive sessions will look at the application of human rights norms to two urgent global environmental challenges: the loss of biodiversity, and global climate change.   

The last session is reserved for revision.

Tutor: Shreya Atrey, Associate Professor in International Human Rights Law, Faculty of Law, University of Oxford

Course objectives and scope

All core human rights treaties explicitly embrace and centralise the value of and right to ‘equality’ in their text. Two of the nine core human rights treaties have the word ‘discrimination’ in their title. Equality and non-discrimination are omnipresent and, arguably, omnipotent in international human rights law. But what are they and how do we discern their meaning, interpretation, application and significance in international human rights law? This course seeks to answer this question by conceiving the field of ‘international equality law’. Across twelve seminars, this course aims to provide a framework for understanding the field of international equality law as a semi-autonomous field with its own point or purpose, and its own governing principles. The course is aimed at understanding this point and purpose and set of governing principles both independently and within the parent field of international human rights law.

Doctrinally, the focus will be on the following five treaties, namely, and chronologically: European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). The focus will be on isolating the work equality and non-discrimination do within the treaties and their relation to the human rights contained in the treaties. Importantly, the course relies on both legal and non-legal literature to make sense of equality and non-discrimination, especially materials in political theory and philosophy. The course ultimately provides a justification for the field of international equality law as being the binding force which brings much of international human rights law together as a whole and without which international human rights law may lack justification of its own.

Tutor: Dino Kritsiotis, Professor of Public International Law at the University of Nottingham, UK

Course objectives and scope

This course is designed to provide candidates with a comprehensive introduction to the regulation of international and non-international armed conflicts within international law (otherwise known as the jus in bello, in contrast to the jus ad bellum (or the international legal regulation of force)). 

One of the guiding themes shall be the historical evolution of and assumptions behind this law, spanning from some of the original articulations of this field (1863 Lieber Code) to where things stand today. A brief introduction to moral, military and cultural philosophy shall be followed by an assessment of the basic framework for regulation established by the four Geneva Conventions of August 1949 and their Additional Protocols of June 1977. We shall then investigate key components of this law—the system for distinguishing between lawful and unlawful combatants, the protections offered to prisoners of war in the Third Geneva Convention, and the scope of so-called ‘fundamental guarantees’ contained in the First Additional Protocol. We shall also consider the principles governing targeting decisions during hostilities, and the means (e.g. nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, landmines and laser weapons) and methods (e.g. sexual violence and starvation) of warfare.

Throughout, our classes shall be informed by a series of case studies (e.g. the conditions of Guantánamo Bay; the treatment of prisoners-of-war during the Ethiopian–Eritrean War (1998–2000); the targeting decisions during Operation Desert Storm (1991) and Operation Allied Force regarding Kosovo (1999)) and consideration shall be given to specific fields of protection (e.g. the environment, cultural property and belligerent occupation) and the burgeoning jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice in this area (e.g. Israeli Wall Advisory Opinion (2004), Nuclear Weapons Advisory Opinion (1996)). Our classes shall conclude by an examination of the evolution in thinking on the implementation and enforcement of this law in all its many manifestations—the role of belligerent reprisals, the system of protecting powers, the phenomenal rise of international criminal law and the prospect of amnesties as envisaged by international humanitarian law.

Tutor: Lars Waldorf, Professor of Law, Northumbria University, UK

Course objectives and scope

This course examines a range of accountability processes in various states transitioning from dictatorship, war, atrocity, and/or violence, including Colombia, Northern Ireland, Rwanda, and Sri Lanka. “Transitional justice” (as it has been termed) consists of five pillars: justice, truth, reparations, guarantees of non-recurrence, and, most recently, memorialisation. These pillars rest, in part, on international human rights law – namely, individual/collective rights and state duties. We will look at some key tensions that arise in designing and implementing transitional justice, including: peace versus justice; and truth versus justice. Finally, we explore various efforts to expand transitional justice to address gross violations of economic, social and cultural rights, ensure corporate responsibility for gross human rights violations, and provide victims with transformative reparations.

Tutor: To be confirmed 

Course objectives and scope

To be confirmed

Tutor: Ann Skelton, Professor of Law and holds the UNESCO Chair in Education Law at the University of Pretoria

Course objectives

1. Understand the international law on the rights of the child through a critical examination of its development, content and implementation at the international, regional and national levels;
2. Develop informed views on how children’s rights are or can be enforced through national, regional and international mechanisms;
3. Develop knowledge and encourage informed debate on selected children’s civil and political and economic and social rights;
4. Explore contemporary themes such as children’s right to peaceful assembly, children’s rights and environmental law, children affected by armed conflict, including children of parents belonging to groups designated as terrorist, and children in situations of migration.

Course scope

The first week of the course will be devoted to a general introduction to the instruments and mechanisms that frame and enforce the rights of children in international human rights law. Following a global overview in seminar 1, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the African Charter on the Rights of the Child will be explored, as they are the two instruments solely dedicated to children’s rights in public international law. Seminars 3 and 4 take up the issue of enforcement of children’s rights through the communications procedure under the CRC.

In the second week we then move on to examine specific thematic rights. Seminar 6 explores children’s rights to freedom of association and peaceful assembly; seminar 7 considers children and environmental rights, focusing in on a contemporary case example. An exploration of social and economic rights through case studies of using litigation to achieve equal access to education is the topic of seminar 8. 

In the third week, seminar 9 examines the rights of children in situations of migration – with a critical review of controversial aspects of two joint general comments of the CRC and the Committee on Migrant Workers. In seminar 10 we will discuss children of parents who are members of groups designated as terrorist, and the return of children of ‘foreign fighters’. The rights The contemporary issues relating to children in situations of armed conflict is the focus of seminar 11, including the reviews by the CRC Committee of the Syrian Arab Republic and the Russian Federation, as well as statements issued regarding Israel/Gaza. Seminar 12 is retained for general discussion and revision of any aspects of the course.

Tutor: Joshua Castellino, Executive Dean of the College of Arts, Law & Social Sciences, Brunel University London; formerly Executive Director of Minority Rights Group International (MRG)

Course scope and objectives

The interconnected topics of racial discrimination, minorities, and indigenous peoples count among the most dynamic areas of contemporary human rights law. They are also complex and challenging as they raise questions about identities and difference, universalism and locality, the interplay of the individual and collectivities; and how international human rights law standards -created mainly by States to fulfil the claims of persons- capture such concepts.

One paradigmatic ‘universalist’ approach to ethnic questions is represented by standards prohibiting racial discrimination, including the influential International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), and its monitoring body, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD). Contrasting with this universal approach, or rather in addition to it, standards on minority rights address specifically the claims of particular groups over a limited range of rights. Members of minorities and indigenous peoples enjoy both sets of protection. Despite their long history as part of international law, minority rights are absent (at least by name) from the UN Charter and the UDHR, but have regained a place in international law, particularly since the end of the Cold War through instruments such as the UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities. Yet, the last few decades have seen the decline of minority rights both in practice but also in the minds of many societies. The category of ‘new minorities’ is still to find its full acceptance at least by States among minorities; and intersectionality has raised important questions. The rights of indigenous peoples also represented a neglected sphere in human rights law but have been invigorated through, inter alia, the work of the International Labour Organization (ILO), the adoption in 2007 by the General Assembly of the United Nations of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), the adoption in 2016 by the OAS of the American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (ADRIP), as well as through  recognition of indigenous rights in the practice of UN human  rights ‘treaty bodies’. The implementation of UNDRIP currently raises interesting dilemmas of empowerment and limits, sovereignty and sharing that the course will explore. Minority rights are often said to occupy an intermediate position between ‘purely’ individual rights, and full collective or group rights, an on-going discussion to be had in the seminars. Indigenous rights, on the other hand, are clearer on their overall collective/group focus, presenting challenges regarding their relationship to individual human rights, as well as raising practical questions in areas such as self-determination, rights to lands, territories and mineral resources, development, participation, and ‘free, prior and informed consent’.

The course aims to provide participants with an overview of the instruments, institutions, norms and concepts relevant to the three areas above, mindful of their interconnections and their setting in the broader framework of human rights law. As we work through the materials, participants should develop the ability to conceptualise key questions relating to ethnicity and identity, as well as analyse and interpret the leading texts in their context. Through this process, we learn to understand the potential (and limits) of normative regulation in the management of ethnic and indigenous questions, bearing in mind the poet MacNeice’s verdict on the ‘incorrigibly plural’ nature of the world we inhabit.

Tutor: Cathryn Costello, Full Professor of Global Refugee and Migration Law at the Sutherland School of Law, University College Dublin

Course objectives

The main objective of this module is to introduce you to International Refugee Law (IRL) and its workings in practice in the Global Refugee Regime. The aim is to ensure that students understand, and can assess critically, the nature, content and scope of IRL, how it relates to international human rights law (IHRL). We will also consider the limits of IRL, in particular in ensuring the right to flee and ‘solutions’ for refugees, and how to assess its effectiveness and legitimacy. 

By the end of this module students should be able to: 

1. Understand the origins, scope and content of IRL, and related norms of IHRL;
2. Critically examine key concepts and principles, including refugee status, asylum, non-refoulement, international protection and solutions;
3. Critically analyse the interactions between IRL and IHRL;
4. Consider the extent and nature of differentiation between refugees in the global refugee regime, and whether it is legally acceptable or discriminatory;
5. Critically assess the workings of IRL, whether its protective promise is met and whether and if so how, it ought to be reformed.
6. Consider the role of key international organizations, in particular UNHCR and UNRWA, in IRL. 

Course scope

International Refugee Law (IRL) comprises a widely ratified international treaty – the Convention on the Status of Refugees 1951 (CSR51). This Treaty became a global instrument with its 1967 Protocol (P67). It has a sister instrument, the OAU Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa (OAU69). The non-binding Cartagena Declaration, mimicking and expanding OAU69, contains an expanded refugee definition applicable across Latin America. Other regions, notably the EU, have complex systems of international protection, ostensibly going beyond CSR51. Many refugees find protection in states that protect refugees without having ratified CSR51. IRL also comprises important principles that cut across IRL and international human rights law (IHRL), notably non-refoulement, the principle that prohibits returning persons to face persecution and other serious human rights violations. IRL is a body of law that is highly bureaucratised and judicialized across the globe, albeit in different permutations across different regions. 

The central objective of this module is to offer an overview of IRL in its international legal setting, in particular exploring its interactions with IHRL. The module will include examination of the legal concept of refugee and the wider concept of ‘international protection’; the inclusion, exclusion and cessation clauses under CSR51, including the particular status of ‘Palestine refugees’ under Article 1D CSR51 in light of the role of UNRWA – the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East; protection from refoulement, rights at the border and access to asylum; rights and duties under CSR51; and the bifurcation in the global refugee regime between refugee rights and ‘solutions’ to bring refugeehood to an end.

There is much debate about the utility and vitality of IRL, with particular concerns expressed about the limitations of CSR51 in particular. Some states and regional entities, notably the EU, increasingly contest the foundational principles of IRL, and devise practices that range from flagrant violations of its precepts to interpretative and policy moves to limit its scope and effectiveness, prompting legal contestations across multiple fora, including national and regional courts and other human rights bodies. 

More broadly, CSR51 is routinely derided as ‘out-dated’ and ‘Eurocentric’. In 2020, one of the leading political philosophers of refugeehood, Seyla Benhabib, wrote of the ‘The End of the Refugee Convention?’ arguing that the ‘current refugee protection regime is not only inadequate for the life and well-being of the nearly 70 million displaced persons in our times, but that it also jeopardizes the demos by encouraging state practices that undermine international law.’ In contrast, on 28 September 2023 a Letter from global NGO leaders to the UK Government appeared in The Guardian, stating that [CSR51] ‘continues to offer an adequate framework for supporting refugees and asylum seekers. In an unstable world, where needs are growing, the refugee convention is as important and necessary as ever.’ So which is it? Is IRL inadequate to current displacement? Does IRL lead governments inexorably to abuse human rights? Is it effective or ineffective, protective, puny or punitive? This course will offer tools and evidence to answer these pressing questions.

Tutor: Frans Viljoen, Director of the Centre for Human Rights at the Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria

Course objectives and scope

The seminar examines an aspect of the implementation and development of human rights law, namely the role of regional human rights systems in the protection of human rights. The course covers the normative instruments, institutions, procedures and some of the jurisprudence of the African, Inter-American and European regional systems, drawing comparisons between the three systems. Recent regional human rights initiatives in respect of Asia and the Arabic-speaking countries are also referred to.

Focusing on the three most developed regional human rights systems, the following questions are asked:

• Where do regional human rights systems fit in relation to other systems (global and national) for the protection of human rights?
• How are the different regional systems structured institutionally and how do their procedures work?
• What kinds of norms do they advance (such as civil and political rights, socio-economic rights, duties, individual and group rights), and how do they advance these norms?
• How do they compare with each other in the above respects? Which factors account for differences between the systems?
• What causes contribute to making regional systems more, or less, effective?
• What are the main challenges that these systems face, and how have they responded to these challenges?
• Are concerns about the legitimacy of these systems valid?
• Should similar systems be developed in regions where they do not yet exist?

At the end of the seminar, students should understand how and for what purposes these systems can be accessed and used. They should have developed some ideas on ways to make them more effective. Students should also be able to compare the three major regional human rights systems with one another, indicating the major differences and similarities, and should endeavour to explain or put these differences and similarities in context.

Tutor: Nazila Ghanea, Professor of International Human Rights Law, Faculty of Law, University of Oxford and Course Director of the MSc in International Human Rights Law

Course objectives 

The objective of this module is to examine the international legal framework for the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of religion or belief against an understanding of IHRL as a whole. The focus is on the international framework established by the United Nations system, though there will be some reference to regional and national norms and frameworks. The goal is to ensure an examination of the full scope of the right to freedom of religion or belief and critical assessment of a range of challenges both to this right itself and in relation to the wider human rights framework. Sessions will allow for an exploration of the prospects for enhancing the implementation of the international protection of freedom of religion or belief in different contexts. 

Course scope 

Freedom of religion or belief has been described as one of the most controversial rights whose enjoyment is affected by contestation of its normative framework in theory and practice. Such contestation has only become more intense as it has also become wrapped up as part of the wider push back against the idea of human rights.  

Some of the controversies around freedom of religion or belief are on account of a misunderstanding of its assumed association with religious laws or norms, and of contestations around the intersection of freedom of religion or belief with numerous other human rights. At a time when religion and belief intolerance is rising and greater attention is being paid to the promotion and protection of freedom of religion or belief, it is important to engage with these debates and acutely examine such controversies. 

Freedom of religion is one of the oldest rights though its conceptualisation has evolved through the ages from a reciprocal demand for the protection of religious minorities to a paradigm of universal freedom articulated under the IHRL framework. Although the quest for religious freedom had played a crucial role in the development of the human rights framework, normative development of the right has been outpaced by that of other norms, such as racial discrimination. The essential framework is based on Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and on Article 18 of the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Attempts to develop a UN treaty has not made progress since the 1960s, and the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief (1981 Declaration) on remains the most detailed formulation of the right at the international level, and there is little prospect that a treaty can be negotiated. 

One of the reasons that work on a treaty is unlikely to resume is the intensifying contestation around key normative elements. This is highlighted, for example, by the imposition of restrictions on proselytising, the use of blasphemy laws, and restrictions imposed on the rights of women. Likewise, concern about violent religious extremism has increased the viewing of religion through a lens of national security, further eroding protection of the right to freedom of religion or belief. In addition to state-imposed restrictions, social hostilities that target humanists and atheists as well as those in vulnerable situations undermine the practical enjoyment of freedom of religion or belief. However, there is emerging realization that it is precisely because of such intolerance, that greater emphasis must be placed on the promotion of freedom of religion or belief. 

Violation of freedom of religion can occur in all contexts, whether religious or secular, and in public or in private, and may be carried out through a wide range of practices. One of the most frequent forms is that of discrimination against minorities, which may be both direct and overt, as in outright bans or in unequal treatment. Discrimination may also be indirect where general laws may, by intent or effect, undermine protected rights of members of various faith or belief communities. Such clashes pit claims based on equality against those based liberty and are becoming more salient as migration makes societies more diverse and plural.  

Amidst a sea of rising challenges, however, there has been unprecedented attention given to promoting freedom of religion and belief in domestic and international contexts. It is important to learn from the experiences of these activities and understand how respect for freedom of religion or belief can be advanced through norm clarification and good practice. 

Tutor: Fareda Banda, Professor of Law at SOAS, University of London

Course objectives and scope

This seminar addresses issues of gender with a specific focus on the international human rights of women from a jurisprudential perspective. The seminar is both theoretical in focus as well as practical. It will explore the dominant concepts and assumptions with regard to women’s international rights. It will also explore the international standards and the use of those standards in furthering women’s international human rights. 

The general objective of this seminar is to introduce you to approaches and concepts that will enhance your ability to explore strategies and opportunities for protecting women’s rights at the national and international level. Women’s international human rights law is an evolving field that is sometimes deeply contested. The course will therefore focus on the diversity of viewpoints and approaches to give you a fuller understanding of the debates and issues. This will assist you in formulating strategies that are better informed and more focused on actual goals and the potential for their realization.

The course has twelve sessions and is divided into four sections. The first section explores the theoretical assumptions that underpin women’s international human rights. It will focus on feminist theories of international law and challenges thereto and explore the concept of equality and its different manifestations. It also seeks to explore the gender dimensions of rights violations particularly as they relate to issues around sexual orientation. The second section will look at CEDAW, the role of the CEDAW Committee, and the Optional Protocol to CEDAW. Reservations to CEDAW, considered by many to evidence lack of commitment on the part of states to upholding the human rights of women are considered within the universal/cultural relativism debate. In this the third section, the class will attempt to discuss strategies and approaches that reconcile cultural diversity with the rights of women. The final section will concentrate on issues relating to violence against women and sexual minorities, intersectionality as well as participation and reproductive rights. Students should be prepared to discuss the readings in class.