12 May 2021
WEBINAR 1: “Human Rights and the COVID-19 Pandemic”
COVID-19 – and state responses to it - present a threat to human rights unparalleled in the contemporary era. At the same time, human rights offer a universal framework which guides decision-makers, ensures accountability for their actions and omissions, and renders visible the structural inequalities which drives the pandemic’s differential impact on certain communities. Looking forward, this panel discusses how human rights can be used to underpin a just and sustainable post-pandemic recovery. Continue reading >>
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10 April 2021
Human Rights and COVID-19: Forging Recovery After a Pandemic of Abuses?
We anticipated a year ago that the pandemic, and state responses to it, presented both threats and opportunities in relation to the full panoply of human rights—civil, political, economic, social and cultural. Our proposition was that, as Scheinin ventures, “human rights do not present a barrier to decisive action to contain the virus”. Rather, they offer a universal frame of reference in the context of COVID-19—guiding national authorities as they balance competing interests and priorities; ensuring public accountability for their actions and omissions; and rendering visible the structural injustices that have driven the contagion’s disproportionate impact on certain communities. A year on, these arguments are all the starker. Continue reading >>
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09 April 2021
Not everyone
On human rights, utopia and who gets to be a member of the European demos and who doesn't Continue reading >>
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27 March 2021
Going Beyond the Rhetoric: Taking Human Rights Seriously in the Post-COVID-19 New Paradigm
This article first analyses the various dimensions of the public health and human rights crisis, in order to identify, secondly, the breadth of the efforts that need to be made for a short- and long-term human rights-based response to COVID-19. Continue reading >>
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25 March 2021
The Virtues and Limits of Transformative Constitutionalism
On 4 March, the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court published a decision in the aftermath of nation-wide prison riots that had killed at least 79 people. This judgment underlines the key functions of a Court empowered with a transformative mandate in the face of systemic failures in public policy – but also the limits of its power to solve those failures. Continue reading >>19 March 2021
No More Need for Doublespeak
How will Southeast Asian governments react to the violent developments in Myanmar? ASEAN’s non-interference principle is often described as an effective shield against foreign meddling in domestic affairs. In the face of reputational damage and possible economic setbacks, though, ASEAN members had started to refer to human rights, democracy and the rule of law to justify occasional peer pressure – not out of normative conviction but due to strategic considerations. After years of democratic backsliding and declining global expectations, however, these semantic gymnastics are much less required today. Continue reading >>
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16 February 2021
The Facebook Oversight Board and ‘Context’
The standout conclusion of the Facebook Oversight Board's two hate speech decisions is that the Board's assessment of content removal heavily relies on context. This is only reasonable, as any speech issue is context-dependent. But the FOB’s context-assessment is incomplete, just as its decisions further highlight Facebook’s content moderation flaws, which likewise fail to consider context. Continue reading >>
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10 February 2021
Constitutional Review via Facebook’s Oversight Board
For all its disorienting novelty, the Facebook Oversight Board’s recent debut thrust us back to a familiar script, that of the emergence of constitutional review, much like the bpower reclaimed by the US Supreme Court in Marbury v Madison. The resemblance not only passed unnoticed; commentators emphatically deny it. I pick up on this strangely recurrent historical parallel and argue that at closer inspection, the OB’s first set of decisions are, indeed, the Marbury v Madison of platform governance. Continue reading >>28 January 2021
Human Rights in the Line of Fire
On 21 January 2021, the Grand Chamber of the European Court delivered its judgment in the case of Georgia v Russia (II). The Court did establish Russia’s responsibility for the consequences of one of the gravest military confrontations the continent has seen since Russia has joined the Strasbourg club. The Court is visibly not at ease with its role to adjudicate human rights violations in an armed conflict between two States. It left the five-day exchange of hostilities to the realm of humanitarian law, however, not exclusively. The white spots on the map of human rights protection in Europe the Court identifies have broad ramifications for the pending cases between Ukraine, The Netherlands and Russia as well as the cases between Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkey. Continue reading >>19 January 2021
Being Naïve or Putting Business First?
The European Union would like to believe that it is acting robustly and cohesively to promote human rights and democracy globally. This (self-)perception as a force of good in terms of responsible business conduct and human rights protection might however be less accurate than many within the EU think. Some details about the recent EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) seem to spoil this rosy picture. Continue reading >>
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