This article develops a multidimensional account of the worth of human life and explores its implications for the philosophical foundations of human rights. It argues that traditional monistic accounts, whether theological, rationalist, autonomy-based, sentientist, or capability-oriented, capture important aspects of human value but remain limited when treated as exclusive foundations. In response, the article proposes a five-dimensional architecture of human worth composed of (i) biological vitality, (ii) sentient-affective life, (iii) moral capacity, (iv) cognitive-productive power, and (v) relational embeddedness. This structure is understood as interdependent and shared rather than as a set of capacities whose exercise determines moral status. The model explains equal human worth by grounding value in structural participation in the architecture of human life, rather than in the possession or performance of any single faculty. It also clarifies how human rights protect the biological, experiential, moral, cognitive, and relational dimensions of human existence. The article’s contribution is therefore not to replace existing human rights theories, but to offer a more integrative account of the human worth that such theories often presuppose.
The purpose of this study was to examine the role of the administrative court and possible ways to optimise its work. The research methodology included a survey of citizens who applied to administrative courts, review and analysis of court decisions, and comparison of administrative court activities in Ukraine, France, and Norway. The findings of the study revealed the prominent role of the administrative court in ensuring human rights and access to justice. An analysis of the survey of citizens who applied to the administrative court showed that most of the respondents reported the insufficient speed of case consideration, which can be a major obstacle to obtaining judicial protection promptly. This necessitates the improvement of the mechanisms of the court’s work to ensure prompt consideration of cases. The study found that citizens often face challenges in the procedural aspects of preparing and filing lawsuits, which suggests the need to improve information support and legal advice for those who apply to the court. This conclusion was based on the analysis of court decisions, which revealed that a considerable number of cases do not reach a positive resolution for the applicants due to formal errors in the documents. A comparative analysis of administrative courts in European Union (EU) countries showed that the efficiency of the administrative justice system largely depends on the degree of digitalisation of court proceedings and the availability of integrated information platforms. In countries where electronic filing and case management systems have been introduced, access to justice is greatly simplified, while processes are more transparent and faster. The findings indicated the need to introduce analogous technologies in Ukraine, which would not only increase the efficiency of the administrative court but also ensure greater transparency of court procedures.
This essay explores how student advocacy seminars affiliated with Scholars at Risk provide an ideal means for engaging students in experiential learning in ways that can critically engage with and apply scholarship on human rights. We explore two different versions of advocacy seminars we offer to our undergraduate students, focusing on similarities and differences in assignments, key concepts, and the development and implementation of student advocacy. Because these courses meet a general curricular requirement focused on integrative or experiential learning, our experiential approach to human rights pedagogy is geared to a wide undergraduate audience and not just to students majoring in political science or international studies. Throughout, we discuss ways that we have sought to ground our approach to engagement in human rights advocacy in cosmopolitan dispositions that foster critical approaches to human rights, guarding against the replication either of white saviorism or Orientalist thinking.
There is a fundamental link between education about human rights and their realization; but mobilizing change-makers requires more than exposure to human rights standards and the institutions that support them. A human rights advocacy course has the potential to be a toolkit for advocates-in-the-making. It can challenge students to consider how human rights apply to their own lives, empower them to be changemakers in their own communities, and equips them with tools and tactics to promote them. When combined with experiential learning, a human rights advocacy course becomes a powerful vehicle for training future human rights scholars and practitioners. This article explores the merits of teaching human rights advocacy consistent with the core components of human rights education: education about human rights, education through human rights, and education for human rights.
In this article, I examine the spatio-temporal construction of human rights in Taiwan through the question of migrant labour. While Taiwan is often celebrated for its progressive human rights achievements after democratisation, the experiences of migrant workers, especially undocumented migrant workers (UMWs), reveal the limits of this celebrated framework. I argue that Taiwan’s human rights development has been shaped by the nation’s post-authoritarian political and economic transformations, producing a context-specific understanding of rights that both enables and constrains human rights protection. Migrant labour exposes the paradox of Taiwan’s human rights trajectory: a linear narrative of democratic progress has made certain rights claims recognisable while leaving others marginal or unintelligible. By interrogating this assumption of linear progress, I challenge the view that human rights will naturally expand to protect all individuals equally. I instead call for a rethinking of human rights grounded in the lived experiences of those excluded from the current framework. Ultimately, I seek to open a more inclusive human rights futurity by examining the spatio-temporal limits through which human rights are constructed, recognised, and denied.
A digital revolution is underway in which individuals on their computers, some working independently or in ad hoc collectives, and others as part of established organizations, are gathering and verifying information from online spaces that they believe contain evidence of human rights violations or international crimes such as war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide. Known commonly as digital investigators, citizen sleuths, or open source intelligence (OSI) researchers, this community of practice has expanded across major newspaper agencies (such as the New York Times, the BBC and the Washington Post), human rights organizations (such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and others), and national and international court systems (including United Nations Commissions of Inquiry and Fact-Finding Missions, and the International Criminal Court). In this article, we draw from our legal and sociological training to explore the role of power and humility in this quickly-emerging field of practice. Fundamentally, power and humility intersect with conceptions of ethics and responsibility but have too often been an afterthought to the intrigue of methodological possibilities and investigative outcomes. From who has access to digital open source investigative training to how investigations are designed to who are considered experts, this article posits that a failure to interrogate power asymmetries and an unwillingness to approach such research with appropriate humility can undermine the integrity and legitimacy of these investigations.
This article interrogates the Westphalian requirement of territoriality as a prerequisite for statehood, proposing a reconstituted model of non-territorial legal personality to address the existential threat of climate-induced displacement. Utilizing a TWAIL-informed critique, the study identifies the geographic trap within the Montevideo Convention as a colonial artifact that facilitates the legal erasure of vanishing island nations and displaced polities. By decoupling legal subjectivity from physical soil, the research reinterprets Article 1 of the ICCPR to frame the continuity of the polity as a functional necessity for the protection of collective human rights. Drawing on precedents from the ICJ and UNGA regarding governments-in-exile and observer status, the paper argues for the recognition of Necessary Subjects within international law. It provides a doctrinal blueprint for a post-territorial legal order, ensuring that the erosion of sovereign land does not result in the termination of the human rights regime for the dispossessed.
Though sanctions on family members of primary targets have become increasingly popular coercive instruments, we know very little about their use, effectiveness, and major legal and human rights consequences. Drawing insight from several targeted sanctions directed at family members of the Russian elite in recent years, this article offers a detailed analysis of (1) why sanctioning states have increasingly opted for family member sanctions, (2) whether targeting family members increases the efficacy of sanctions regimes, (3) to what extent such targeted sanctions are legally and ethically defensible, and (4) whether they undermine human rights of targeted individuals. Our analysis suggests that family member sanctions have limited utility as they are mostly ineffective tools. They could also cause major human rights issues and legal challenges for the sanctioned individuals. Hence, family member sanctions appear to be ethically problematic tools that warrant careful reconsideration.
Many teachers of human rights at post-secondary institutions are aware of a creeping pessimism about the subject among students. Rising authoritarianism, climate catastrophe, grinding wars, mass involuntary migration, rampant misinformation and the unsettling possibilities of AI have made the world promised by the human rights project seem a distant prospect, and students express skepticism about its liberatory power or even more modest utility. Confronted with students more eager to critique rights than parse their form and content, the author turned this critical impulse into the material for a course, “Beyond Human Rights Critique?” Taking this reflex for critique as a starting point, the course asked students to reflect on the stakes of such a sensibility, and to move beyond the satisfactions of critique to think about what comes after (and as a result) of such an orientation. Framed around the author’s experience teaching this course, the article asks: what is the value and function of critique in human rights pedagogy today?
Adopted in February 2025, the African Union’s Convention on Ending Violence Against Women and Girls (CEVAWG) is the first binding continental treaty dedicated exclusively to eradicating gender-based violence. Its adoption coincides with the thirtieth anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (Beijing + 30), offering an opportunity to evaluate Africa’s role in shaping global feminist governance. This article situates CEVAWG within the genealogy of international and regional women’s rights instruments, including CEDAW (1979), the Beijing Platform for Action (1995), and the Maputo Protocol (2003). It argues that while earlier frameworks universalized women’s rights or contextualized them in partial ways, CEVAWG advances a distinctly decolonial feminist approach. Its expansive definition of violence, intersectional protections, integration of African epistemologies, and recognition of grassroots women’s movements mark an epistemic shift. Africa emerges not as a passive recipient of global feminist norms but as an active producer of feminist international law. At the same time, the article critiques CEVAWG’s heavy reliance on state institutions and punitive justice mechanisms, warning that such state-centrism risks reproducing structural and carceral violence rather than dismantling it. Drawing on decolonial theory, the article contends that CEVAWG’s significance lies in both its promise and its tensions: it represents a transformative feminist intervention into global norm-making,yet its emancipatory potential will depend on implementation, the centering of grassroots practices, and resistance to state capture. CEVAWG, I argue, is Africa’s Beijing + 30 response; an attempt to provincialize universalist feminism and anchor gender justice in the continent’s own histories, struggles, and epistemologies.
Contributing to the critical human rights education scholarship, this article explores how situated assessments such as the Critical Response Paper, Opinion Piece, Human Rights Report Strategic Plan, Medea Mock Trial, and Human Rights Council Simulation center positionality to invite students to grapple with the potentialities and limits of human rights. Situated assessments first ask students to employ critical feeling and thinking and active reflexivity to make sense of how their lives are intertwined with broader political structures. Then, they guide students to apply these dispositions to experience how different actors - individuals, activists, social movements, non-governmental organizations, states, and the United Nations, practice human rights globally. As a result, they foster knowledge from multiple perspectives about the ethos, mechanisms, processes, and institutions that circumscribe human rights, prompting students to consider power structures and historical contingencies while imagining radical futures.
The issue of inheritance distribution for transgender individuals in Muslim societies presents a legal and ethical dilemma that necessitates a multidisciplinary inquiry. This study explores the compatibility of Islamic inheritance law and international human rights standards, focusing on transgender rights, gender identity, and justice. The primary objective is to assess whether Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) can evolve to accommodate contemporary understandings of gender while preserving doctrinal integrity. Methodologically, the research employed a normative legal analysis combined with comparative case studies and fatwa reviews from multiple Muslim-majority countries. It also utilized the maqashid al-shari’ah framework and human rights principles such as non-discrimination and the right to property. Key sources included classical and reformist Islamic scholarship, human rights declarations, national legal reforms, and court precedents. The findings reveal that classical fiqh lacks provisions for transgender inheritance but allows reform via maqashid al-shari’ah and legal maxims like al-‘adah muhakkamah. Human rights norms, notably those found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Yogyakarta Principles, advocate for equitable inheritance rights. Fatwas from institutions in Iran, Egypt, and Malaysia provide partial support for gender recognition post-transition, though inheritance rights remain inconsistently applied. National laws, such as Pakistan’s Transgender Act, signal a shift toward inclusivity. Reformist scholars propose contextual ijtihad and hybrid legal models as pathways to justice. This research concludes that the harmonization of Islamic inheritance law and human rights is not only possible but essential. It contributes to legal pluralism and highlights the potential of ijtihad to bridge doctrinal law and social realities, urging further empirical studies on transgender Muslims’ lived experiences.
Freedom of thought is among the strongest human rights, yet it is largely devoid of practical legal application. This article operationalizes the right by distilling ten core aspects, mainly psychological capacities such as attention, meta-control over thought, and rational belief formation. It then examines how these aspects may be adversely affected by three digital technologies: neurotechnologies, virtual reality, and especially social media. The article addresses why the use of digital technologies might be a human rights issue at all and the doctrinal challenge associated with it. People use these technologies voluntarily, and detrimental effects tend to arise from a multitude of diffuse stimuli rather than from discrete identifiable interventions by a specific human -rights-bound actor. This complicates, and often renders impossible, findings of conventional interferences with rights. But this may not exhaust the remit of human rights. Another human rights-based perspective is proposed: Detrimental effects on thought might be conceptualized as risks arising from a digital environment, which may prompt States’ obligations to fulfil the enjoyment of the right by securing its factual–in this case, psychological–preconditions. A prime measure to meet this obligation is the regulation of technology through innovative models such as a freedom-of-thought impact assessment, or freedom-of-thought-sensitive technology design, for which the ten aspects provide a workable foundation.
The recruitment and retention of individuals from Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities within UK police forces is not only a persistent operational challenge, but also a critical human rights issue. This paper examines the failure of UK police forces to maintain accessible, comprehensive records on BAME recruitment and retention—a deficiency that undermines both domestic legal duties and international human rights obligations. By integrating empirical data obtained through Freedom of Information (FOI) requests with a doctrinal analysis of the Equality Act 2010 and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), this study argues that the ‘data gap’ constitutes a breach of the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) and imperils the pursuit of substantive equality in policing. This research contributes to the existing literature on institutional accountability and state data practices by advancing a framework that links data transparency with the broader imperatives of human rights protection.
The jurisdictional immunity of international organizations often conflicts with the right to access to courts. In the Waite and Kennedy case, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled that the recognition of jurisdictional immunity for an international organization depends on whether the organization has an internal dispute resolution mechanism that aggrieved individuals can access. The Court described this approach as the “test of proportionality.” However, the ECtHR did not clarify the specific content of this proportionality test. In other words, the Court has not established clear standards for evaluating whether an organization’s internal dispute resolution mechanism meets the requirements of proportionality. This article seeks to establish a comprehensive framework for the proportionality test, particularly an exploration of its substantive standards. This will be achieved by analyzing the ECtHR’ judgment in the Waite and Kennedy case, as well as other related case law that has applied the proportionality test. The authors find that the Court in Waite and Kennedy case determined that aggrieved individuals must have “reasonable alternative means to protect effectively” their right to access to courts. Consequently, it can be argued that reasonableness and effectiveness are the key standards underlying the proportionality test. These standards should guide domestic courts when evaluating the adequacy of any internal dispute resolution mechanism provided by an international organization.
The refugee crisis has been one of the most challenging problems in Europe in recent years, causing sudden and significant political turmoil in most of its member states. Notwithstanding the international treaties on refugee protection, a crucial issue is the reluctance of many local communities to offer refugees access to the labour market and daily social activities. In addition to the difficulties regarding social acceptance, there are also many other legal, social, ethical and political obstacles for refugees. This discussion is mainly limited to the realm of politics and ethics with very few references to the field of management, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and corporate sustainability (CS) where the issues of marginalized people, minorities and vulnerable people are frequently addressed. To fill this gap, this article aims to discuss the role of CSR and CS in overcoming obstacles for refugees in their effort to integrate into the labor market. Through a narrative literature review and snowballing techniques, a theoretical framework has been developed to outline the ways that CSR and CS can assist refugees in overcoming different types of obstacles in host countries. Finally, in the discussion, ways in which CSR and CS literature could play a critical role in this discussion are highlighted and how the private sector could relieve the refugee crisis through CSR strategies.
This paper presents a discussion of justice issues in the world’s largest sanitation program, namely the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) in India, with a focus on the SBM’s two aspects of toilet provisioning and ensuring toilet usage. Data for this paper was collected via semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with SBM implementers deployed from the grassroots to the apex level in the Indian state of Jharkhand. We argue, based on our findings, that though the SBM was an effectively implemented sanitation program, it is less clear if it is a human rights success story.
