Abstract This article presents the Human Rights Mentoring Program of the Human Rights Center of the University of Buenos Aires as an innovative form of activist pedagogy in human rights developed within a large and diverse public university in a Latin American country. The analysis focuses on the context in which it is carried out. It considers that the design of programs of activist pedagogies varies significantly according to the specific circumstances in which they are designed. The main aim of this program is to guide undergraduate students in developing a career with a human rights perspective, proposing a pathway for them to appreciate the various ways in which the legal profession can be practiced with this orientation. It consists mainly of induced interactions between students and experts from different areas of the legal profession, in which the latter share their experiences in the field of human rights and the professional and ethical challenges they have encountered. The program had adopted a student-centered approach, changing over the years according to the needs and expectations of students. It shows human rights from a transversal perspective and that the human rights approach is relevant to the practice of law in general, regardless of the area of expertise of each professional.
Abstract The intersection between climate change and human rights has attracted growing academic and institutional attention, particularly regarding the obligations of states under international law. However, the role of national human rights institutions (NHRIs) in addressing this nexus remains underexplored. This article addresses this gap by examining how and to what extent NHRIs in Europe engage with the human rights implications of climate change. By combining doctrinal legal analysis with original empirical data from a regional survey of European NHRIs, the article demonstrates that while engagement varies significantly among institutions, their mandates and legal frameworks provide a strong foundation for meaningful involvement. Drawing on the findings of both legal and empirical analysis, the article formulates practice-oriented implications for NHRIs, their networks, and states. It argues that NHRIs, as independent institutions grounded in law and legitimacy, are uniquely positioned to help ensure that climate action respects human rights—both now and for future generations.
Abstract This study reports on the design and implementation of a low-tech, embodied learning toolkit that supports the situated practice of democratic competences among university students. Grounded in the Council of Europe’s Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (RFCDC), the toolkit combines tactile constraints, fictional but realistic scenarios, and structured dialogue anchored in human rights. Focus groups, facilitator field notes, researcher observations, and post-session reflections were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis to explore (i) which competences were enacted and (ii) which pedagogical mechanisms supported learning. Findings indicate that students engaged with rights dilemmas through unequal materials, structured disagreement, and facilitated reflection, with competences appearing through interactions with materials, scenarios, and peers. The study highlights the potential of embodied learning approaches for competence-oriented human rights education in higher education.
Abstract This article examines the phenomenon of the judicialization of memory in Chile, focusing on how courts have addressed demands for symbolic reparations arising from human rights violations committed during the military dictatorship. It asks whether Chilean jurisprudence recognizes the exercise of the right to memory through judicial mechanisms within the framework of transitional justice. Based on a qualitative analysis of relevant case law, the study explores how victims have resorted to human rights litigation to pursue memory-related measures. The findings show that Chilean courts have recognized such claims in an inconsistent and fragmented manner, occasionally ordering symbolic measures. However, this jurisprudence does not amount to a consolidated judicial recognition of the right to memory. The article concludes that, while the judicialization of memory has fostered innovative forms of legal mobilization and broadened the repertoire of strategies available to victims, it has not succeeded in generating a sustained or profound democratic debate on memory.
Integrating activist knowledge into human rights education (HRE) is increasingly central to discussions on the trajectory of global, national, and local human rights activism. In this policy and practice note, we aim to explore the experience of the Escuela de Justicia Transnacional (or School of Transnational Justice-STJ), a 6 month education program designed for community-based human rights defenders and activists in Mexico and recently in other countries in Latin America. Led by the Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Project (ProDESC), a Mexican feminist human rights organization with two decades of experience in human rights work, in collaboration with a team of human rights academics and popular pedagogy educators, the STJ serves as a platform where community activists, human rights educators and professionally trained human rights defenders work together to develop tools for addressing complex human rights challenges faced by communities and collectives on the ground. The findings of this note show how the interplay among the different actors involved in the STJ exemplifies a dynamic and relational process of collective teaching, learning, and knowledge production that gives rise to a pedagogy of praxis grounded in critical reflection, shared action, and political commitments.
In this article, we explore the role of artivism in human rights advocacy in higher education. Through escreviv & ecirc;ncia, the 'living-writing' that attempts to reveal and disturb the 'unfair sleep' of oppressors, we present paths towards pluriversal and decolonial approaches to human rights advocacy in academic contexts. Shifting away from geo-cultural hierarchies of knowledge, we explore new forms of imagining and sensing advocacy, unfolding a process of learning and unlearning human rights in a North-centred context while seeking to transform human rights into emancipatory praxis. Through a collective feminist autoethnography accounting for our reflexive and sensory experiences at a student advocacy initiative in higher education and in collaboration with the Scholars at Risk network working for the liberty of Professor Saibaba, we draw on escreviv & ecirc;ncia as a methodology and critical pedagogy. The insights garnered from our escreviv & ecirc;ncia, in solidarity with Saibaba's, vividly illustrate the enduring influence of art and the multisensory in driving meaningful social change, with our creative involvement challenging imaginaries and narratives in society, transcending conventional frameworks of advocacy, teaching, and academic writing while engaging with a plurality of struggles and resistances. In doing so, this study contributes to the reimagining of human rights education, which is not just about understanding rights as abstract concepts, but as meaningful embodied experiences rooted in active co-creation, relationality, and critical praxis.
Current studies suggest that embodied teaching and learning can enhance knowledge acquisition in higher education and support long-term retention. However, despite the increasing recognition of these benefits, there remain significant knowledge gaps-especially concerning the challenges and opportunities for multidisciplinary educator teams in developing and conducting embodied exercises in class. These gaps extend to legal education, where little attention has been paid to emerging issues when embedding movement and gestures into the study of human rights law. This practice note intends to contribute to the required exchange of experiences by sharing the challenges, opportunities, and lessons learned by a multidisciplinary team-composed of academics, a dancer, and a musician, in developing and delivering the pilot course 'Rights Moves - Embodied Legal Learning' at the Faculty of Law of Johannes Kepler University Linz (Austria). The experimental course formed part of the 'TRANSFORM' funding scheme of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science, and Research, which aimed to explore innovative teaching formats to better prepare students for the complexities of contemporary society.
This practice note focuses on activist pedagogy in human rights-based public health education. Activist pedagogy, situated in critical applied pedagogy, can prepare students and learners to challenge the systems and structures of power that diminish and violate human rights. Educators can prepare learners with the skills necessary to incorporate activist approaches into their professional practice. The author shares an approach, reflective podcasting, which aims to facilitate internalization of information learned in the course through the development of tacit knowledge that can form the foundation for the application of activist approaches to protect and promote human rights through public health practice. This practice note draws attention to the useful place of human rights education in public health. It discusses how activist pedagogy can prepare public health students to advocate for transformative change that will protect and promote human rights in their professional practice. The practice note describes an approach, reflective podcasting, which can help students develop the skills to be able to take steps to implement the change necessary for health equity.
This study examines the integration of activist pedagogy in politically constrained environments, focusing on the ethical and practical challenges faced by scholar-activists who teach justice-centred curricula. Centring on Malaysia's restrictive political landscape, which remains fraught with limitations despite the democratic shifts of 2018, the study investigates the dual role of educators as teachers and strategic human rights actors. It analyses the tensions between institutional expectations of neutrality and the imperative to advance human rights in contexts where advocacy carries political risks. Anchored in Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Boler's Pedagogy of Discomfort, this article explores how these frameworks can be adapted to classroom practice. Using autoethnographic reflection on a decade (2015-25) of teaching undergraduate human rights courses, the analysis highlights strategies of curricular design, classroom dialogue, and active learning that balance the fostering of critical inquiry with the avoidance of ideological imposition. The findings show how activist pedagogy can be operationalized through reflexivity and context-specific strategies across three domains: politically contentious issues, social and cultural sensitivities, and institutional constraints. The study concludes that activist pedagogy, when applied reflexively and strategically, holds transformative potential to empower learners and sustain critical engagement, even in environments where academic freedom and open dialogue remain tightly circumscribed.
Feminist movements operate within highly hostile environments, often marked by violent repression and persistent threats. This relentless strain can lead to significant burnout, stress, and trauma among women's human rights defenders (WHRDs). Without dedicated and intentional support for healing, self-care, and collective care, WHRDs risk severe health and wellbeing consequences that undermine their ability to continue their vital work. In exploring the profound challenges faced by African WHRDs, the article emphasizes how decolonial Afro-feminist practices and approaches of healing justice and collective care are not just supplementary aspects of movement building but are central to addressing the impacts of violence, repression, and trauma. The article outlines the journey of Organization X in embedding theoretical concepts of care and healing through the Feminist Republik Platform. By sharing Organization X's experience, the article illustrates the potential for similar transformations within other feminist and women's human rights organizations. The article invites those in solidarity with WHRDs-whether they are donors, philanthropic institutions, activist networks, and social justice movements-to join in the conversation about the importance of healing justice and to re-think traditional support models in order to build stronger and sustainable feminist movements that can drive transformative change.
Through an exploration of the planning, implementation, assessment, and redesign of an interdisciplinary undergraduate course on human rights, this article provides empirical insight into a range of pedagogical tools that contribute to the aims of critical human rights education (CHRE), including experiential or activist components. With its overall goal of exposing students to plural understandings and operations of power, the course engaged in three distinct practices: regularly bringing 'the canon' into conversation with 'the critical', challenging norms and power related to disciplinarity, and epistemic challenges to the notion of 'expertise'. These practices are evidenced throughout the article, drawing on examples of course design, class activities, and student projects conducted with community partners. Analysis of these tools and their impact on student learning in ways that align with the goals of CHRE reveals two important lessons in pedagogical design: holistic planning and braiding. The redevelopment of the course illustrates the importance of paying significant attention to the ways in which different elements of a course are interdependent-challenging 'sequential' models of pedagogical design and instead encouraging the metaphor of 'braiding' in course design and delivery. These lessons emerge as particularly true in regard to the experiential elements of the course and are important in challenging tensions between the 'critical' vs 'practical' schools of human rights education. The article concludes with a discussion of the challenges of engaging in CHRE within the confines of higher education institutions.
This article aims to analyse the experiences of individuals who have fallen victim to anti-personnel mines in Colombia through a qualitative and phenomenological approach. Based on survivors' narratives, the study identifies unequal trajectories of physical, emotional, and social rehabilitation, shaped by institutional exclusion and social displacement. It proposes a community-based rehabilitation strategy, aligned with the human rights-based approach, to address their contextual needs. The research underscores the importance of a comprehensive, dignified, and participatory rehabilitation process that acknowledges victims' subjectivity and ensures the effective enjoyment of their rights.
Drawing on the experiences of developing the Irish Network of Legal Observers, this article explores the role of the legal observer in upholding the contemporary right of protest. It develops a categorization of different types of legal observer projects and analyses the international protections available to human rights defenders. Ultimately, the article argues that the legal observer plays an essential human rights function, particularly when police forces refuse basic levels of transparency.
Deportations can threaten the fundamental rights of those being forcibly removed, especially during their execution. On this account, Article 8(6) of the EU Return Directive requires Member States to set up effective systems to monitor deportations. This provision mandates monitors to act as third-party witnesses to observe that deportation operations respect human rights, without interfering with procedures. Through interviews with monitors, this article explores their ambivalent positioning as guardians of rights and facilitators of 'more humane' and efficient operations in the context of air deportations. Findings show that monitors often face tensions between their human rights oversight role and their implication in a process that is inhumane. While they play a crucial role in oversight-enhancing visibility, producing authoritative knowledge, contributing to the disruption of official narratives, and documenting to enable changes-their limited powers make them part of a system that can lead, in certain circumstances, to them facilitating deportations in practice. The article interrogates such ambivalence of monitoring, finally briefly noting the need for reconsidering mandates and intervention powers of monitors, as to empower deportees and further distance monitoring from state enforcement practices.
In this article, we put forward the concept of the 'exiled activist' to highlight the predicaments and the possibilities that practicing human rights activism from abroad bring with it. Human rights activists from Myanmar struggle to continue their work after the military regime forced them to flee their home country over four and a half years ago. Since the attempted military coup on 1 February 2021, 30,074 citizens have been imprisoned and 7,517 killed (as of December 2025). Although exiled activism has a long tradition in Myanmar, the current situation is unprecedented. Not only have many activists left the country, but those who are still in Myanmar have been forced into hiding or have joined the armed resistance. This brain drain has impacted NGO work as well as different education sectors, including the formal education sector and online education formats in which many human rights activists were previously employed. This article takes account of these dramatic changes and focuses on the actual work that exiled activists from Myanmar currently carry out, as well as on the psychosocial predicaments they face.
This article explores the humanrightization of migration discourses, with particular attention to the concepts of legal (human rights) consciousness, 'doing human rights', and speech acts. We argue that over the past three decades, migration issues have increasingly been framed, discussed, and negotiated through the language of human rights. Politically and socially, this is reflected in frequent references to human rights within advocacy, justification, and the struggles of migrants and their allies. Legally, it is evident in courts and legal actors acknowledging human rights claims made by migrants, irrespective of their status. Human rights are also widely invoked in the everyday experiences of migration societies. The article conceptualizes humanrightization as a transformative process by which human rights norms become embedded in legal, political, and social discourses. This shapes the way migration-related conflicts are addressed across contexts. In contrast to earlier patterns of discretionary inclusion or exclusion, this trend marks a significant expansion of human rights frameworks. It reflects a broader development since the 1990s, where human rights have become central to justice, governance, and policymaking. The authors' framework captures both the promise and the complexity of humanrightization. While it opens possibilities to challenge discriminatory laws, restrictive policies, and exclusionary practices, it does not assume a linear or inevitable progression. Rather, outcomes are shaped by shifting power relations and specific political conditions. By focusing on the humanrightization of migration, this article contributes to a deeper understanding of contemporary human rights practice in societies shaped by migration and transnational interconnection.
The COVID-19 pandemic had a well-documented impact on practices, routines and lived experiences in older people's care homes. International human rights law requires individual states to establish institutions-National Preventive Mechanisms -to report on torture and ill-treatment in places of detention, including care homes. Adopting documentary analysis of 36 NPM monitoring reports from 20 Council of Europe Countries between 2020 and 2022, this article explores the human rights implications that arose during the first 2 years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite legislative and regulatory differences across these jurisdictions, the reports reveal common patterns where COVID-19 created tensions between promoting human rights and placing restrictions on them. Four key themes arose around pre-existing sectoral pressures, the implementation of legal and regulatory measures in reaction to the pandemic, residents' experiences of their rights and freedoms being disrupted and the proliferation of new ways of working in response to the pandemic. The result is a broad picture of practices that disrupted or abandoned the human rights of older people living in care homes across a range of nations, regardless of the differences in legal measures adopted in individual national contexts. A crucial observation is the pattern of implementary discretion and the gap between national policy and local practice, leading to the human rights of residents being viewed as expendable. As the sector continues to reflect on learning from the pandemic, this observation may support an environment where older people's human rights are valued, affirmed, and promoted outside of pandemic conditions.
Among Scandinavian states Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, ministries and state agencies have important roles, fulfilling the state duty to protect human rights. This article examines if, and to what extent, these state institutions monitor evolving case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), in the pursuit of this endeavor. Regarding monitoring, the primary objective of ministries is to adjust existing laws and to ensure new laws meet international commitments under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). This article critically examines how these jurisdictions monitor ECtHR judgments, particularly those not directly involving the state, but which may nonetheless necessitate adjustments to domestic legal practices. This research, integrating policy analysis, research, and 17 interviews with state agencies, reveals a systemic deficiency within Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish state institutions in monitoring the ECtHR's evolving standards. A gap with significant legal, economic, and societal-wide implications.
South Africa's Constitution is restitution-oriented, yet the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) established by the Constitution must use expensive, slow High Court processes to enforce outcomes. The author argued in the Constitutional Court of South Africa with minimal costs as the proceedings were virtual. This led the author to wonder how justice could be affordable for all. More recently, the author was a litigant in the Electoral Court of South Africa, where applicants were unrepresented-and his side won, albeit with higher costs. Questions arising out of why these cases were relatively affordable led the author to propose a Rights Court of South Africa to make litigation for basic rights accessible. The proposed model draws on the strong points of the Electoral Court: nimble processes and a link to a rights-related institution. This Rights Court would replace the Equality Court with a specialist standalone court with concurrent jurisdiction with the High Court but with simpler, more nimble processes aimed at quick results on rights violations. The SAHRC would use this court for litigating violations of the Bill of Rights and the streamlined processes of this court would make for rapid restitution, while not overwhelming the SAHRC with costs. Access to the court would be through the SAHRC, with allowance for direct access if the SAHRC denies a request, to avoid inundating the court. Other countries with a justiciable Bill of Rights could adopt a similar concept.
From a legal perspective, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) mandates states to create inclusive political environments, recognizing that participation extends beyond voting procedures to broader engagement in democratic processes. For persons with disabilities, political participation remains a complex challenge. Emerging digital technologies, particularly AI-driven assistive tools, can assist people in their daily lives and foster political participation. However, digital technologies also raise concerns related to surveillance and disinformation, and they contribute to the digital divide. Through a comparative analysis of South Africa, Brazil, and Switzerland, this paper explores how different state actors incorporate CRPD provisions and leverage technology to promote political inclusiveness. Analysing comparatively legislative frameworks, public policies, and administrative and material measures, the paper argues that there are advancements and persistent barriers to the discussion on the use of and access to technologies for fostering political participation of persons with disabilities.
