The climate crisis, which is part of a broader planetary crisis, has been studied and documented extensively by climate scientists and others. Governance responses are often ‘too little, too late’. In an attempt to speed up these efforts, recourse is more and more sought in human rights law and human rights litigation. Some landmark judgments and advisory opinions have been handed down, but, overall, progress is slow and uneven. We argue that the reach of human rights law must be expanded in space (global obligations) and time (future generations) to address the climate crisis. In relation to space, the paradigm of the territorial State still prevails, barring human rights law from regulating the acts and omissions of foreign States, businesses and historically rich States, amongst others. In relation to time, human rights protection does not reach people who have not yet been born, and barely covers the risk of future rights violations. We explore recent developments that may help to universalise human rights in space and time, and suggest further or alternative steps where needed.
This article examines the execution of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights as a site of legal and political contestation, in the context of migration and border control. It introduces the concept of reverse strategic (post)litigation to capture how respondent States may use doctrinal, procedural, and discursive mechanisms during the execution phase to reinterpret, narrow, or delay the implications of adverse rulings. Drawing on a qualitative case study of recent Greek maritime border enforcement judgments, the article identifies three forms of post-judgment contestation: procedural tactics that fragment findings; interpretive approaches that narrow the scope of violations; and institutional strategies shaping execution before the Committee of Ministers. The findings demonstrate how these practices can result in formal execution without structural reform, thereby undermining accountability for human rights deficiencies. In response, the article proposes a model structured around three dimensions: the characterisation of violations; the articulation of obligations; and the supervisory structuring of execution. While not a comprehensive solution to non-execution, the model shows how clearer judicial reasoning and remedial guidance can reduce interpretive flexibility and strengthen supervision. The article concludes that effective human rights protection is determined not only by adjudication, but by how judgments are interpreted and executed in practice.
The passing of symbolic milestones in 2026, such as the 60th anniversary of the adoption of the International Human Rights Covenants and the 20th anniversary of the UN Human Rights Council, arrives at a time of palpable gloom in the international human rights world and within multilateral spaces more broadly. This despondency arises in an environment marked by rapidly evaporating financial resources for human rights work and the fraying of multilateral institutions. Even amidst this overall retrogressive political landscape, it is worth recalling the remarkable successes the Covenants have had in actualizing and, to some measure, improving on the abstract promises of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. The supervisory committees have approached the Covenants as living instruments, moving to fill gaps and ambiguities in provisions, neutralize the artificial distinction between civil and political and economic, social and cultural rights and facilitate the use of Covenants as living instruments thorough which justice might effectively be accessed. Still, much more is needed and remains possible. The UN initiative first proposed in 1947 to make the Covenants internationally enforceable through a world court of human rights remains a compelling yet unfulfilled project. As the UN 80 reform process advances, it is not unreasonable to consider that the space for further progressive developments may open, once the downward trend in what may be part of a cyclical pattern is exhausted.
European Union (EU) Directive 2024/1712 mandates Member States to criminalise the ‘exploitation of surrogacy’ where all constitutive elements of human trafficking are present. Prior to this Directive, European States were mainly guided by the European Court of Human Rights’ interpretation of the right to private life of Article 8 in the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR). Accordingly, absolute and general non-recognition of legal parenthood following international surrogacy violates the surrogate child's rights to have one's parental link formalised unless it involved illicit practices. Many States consider payment/profiting to the surrogate as abuse of her position of vulnerability rendering possible consent ‘unfree’. In transposing the Directive, some States extend national criminalisation based on compensation to international surrogacy and justify the measures as necessary to prevent exploitation. This article assesses the Italian legislation and Dutch Draft, evaluates their justifications, and weighs them against the scope of unfree consent under international law. It shows that criminalisation based objectively on compensation is over-inclusive. It advocates for limiting criminalisation of international surrogacy to the scope of the Palermo definition of human trafficking. Universal bans, besides unnecessarily restricting a surrogate's autonomy, violate the right to family and private life of European intending parents and surrogate children.
This article examines how the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) responds when penal populist resistance places its authority under strain. Focusing on three domains – prisoner disenfranchisement, whole-life sentencing, and preventive detention – it traces post-landmark case law to assess whether political contestation shapes judicial reasoning. The analysis finds a recurring pattern of strategic restraint: the Court upholds core Convention principles (rejecting blanket voting bans, irreducible life terms, and retroactive penalties) yet often tempers their application, relying more on subsidiarity, the margin of appreciation, procedural review, and deference to national institutions. This selective deference appears most pronounced where political costs are high or partial reforms are offered, helping to avoid open confrontation and maintain compliance at the expense of coherence and the perception of double standards. The findings illuminate the ECtHR's balancing act between robust rights protection and institutional survival in a politicised penal landscape.
This article examines whether recent jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights reflects a recalibration from protection toward deterrence in cases involving climate activism. While the Court has historically afforded comparatively strong protection to symbolic, provocative, and disruptive forms of political expression under Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, recent judgments suggest a more cautious and deferential approach toward domestic public order assessments. Through a doctrinal and comparative analysis of the Court's environmental and protest-related jurisprudence, including Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland, Bryan and Others v. Russia, Friedrich v. Poland, and Ludes and Others v. France, the article identifies an emerging pattern characterised by procedural deference, uneven proportionality review, and increased emphasis on public order considerations, criminal legality, and public property protection. It argues that this development risks narrowing the practical scope of expressive and assembly rights in the context of climate activism, particularly for individual activists engaging in peaceful but disruptive protest. The article concludes by proposing doctrinal clarifications intended to strengthen the coherence of the Court's proportionality analysis and to ensure that Articles 10 and 11 continue to function as effective guarantees of democratic participation and public interest expression in the context of climate change.
This article considers the content and implementation of the right to freedom of religion at city-level. Focusing on hyper-diverse Western European cities, it explains how religious belief is manifested in urban space and critically discusses the European Court on Human Rights’ religious freedom case law. Referring to examples of the pragmatic governance of religious diversity in certain cities and to the phrasing and positioning of religious freedom in ‘city rights charters’, the article suggests that urbanity may be producing more pragmatic, positive, and inclusive understandings of the right than that hitherto reflected in European human rights jurisprudence.
As an increasing number of climate change cases reach international and regional (quasi-)judicial bodies, they present novel legal issues that these bodies have to grapple with. One of these issues is the determination of the scope of extraterritorial obligations of States for transboundary climate harm, which has led to divergent reasoning and outcomes in recent cases. This article traces how this issue has been assessed in recent climate litigation and other interpretative documents. By contrasting the approach of the European Court of Human Rights with that of the Committee on the Rights of the Child and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, it examines the unique issues climate change raises in determining (extra)territorial jurisdiction and how these bodies have navigated these issues. In doing so, the article seeks to elucidate the challenges and unanswered questions in international human rights law concerning States' extraterritorial obligations for transboundary climate harm.
The progressive platformisation of society has left an oligarchical group of multinational tech companies in a dominant market position with unprecedented influence over public debate online. This Big Tech broligarchy is presided over by CEOs who epitomize their companies and exercise largely unrestrained control over the policies of their companies’ platforms and services. When the interests of the Big Tech broligarchy dovetail with those of autocratic leaders, a concatenation of technological, political and communicative power arises. This technautocratic power exploits the paradigmatic – or techtonic – changes in public debate caused by platformisation, facilitating the wide and forceful dissemination of a version of freedom of expression that is far removed from the shared and’authoritative meaning of the right to freedom of expression, as guaranteed under international and European human rights law. This has opened new battlefronts for the legitimacy and authority of the right to freedom of expression.
Global meat consumption has tripled over the past 50 years and is expected to further increase owing to rising incomes and population growth, particularly in emerging economies. Meanwhile, it is well established that meat production is a cause of, and will be impacted by, the climate crisis. Consequently, there is an urgent need for food systems transformation. One technology which may be part of this transformation is the production of meat through the cultivation of animal cells in a laboratory environment, known as cultivated meat. This article undertakes a critical analysis of the opportunities and challenges associated with cultivated meat vis-à-vis the right to adequate food, as protected under Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. It focuses on three key components of the right articulated by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR): availability, accessibility, and quality. Using cultivated meat as a case study, the article argues that whilst CESCR and Special Procedure mandate-holders provide an indication of how to support this shift to sustainable food systems, the right to adequate food framework requires an evolving interpretation to ensure sustainable food technologies do not widen existing global socio-economic inequalities.
The right to housing is a fundamental human right, yet its role in domestic litigation remains difficult to trace. This paper examines to what extent the right to housing plays a role in Dutch eviction case law through a dataset of 6,005 cases, combining automated citation extraction, keyword searches, and manual verification. We identify 930 cases in which the right to housing explicitly or indirectly played a role. The European Convention on Human Rights, particularly Article 8, emerges as the most significant international source. International case law becomes particularly relevant where domestic protections are weakened, while national cases can function as gateways through which the (international) right to housing enters domestic legal discourse. Methodologically, this study demonstrates that integrating computational tools with traditional legal methods identifies more relevant cases and references than either approach alone, while also underscoring the need for a careful validation of automated results.
Academic freedom is under-protected in international human rights law. In order to remedy the situation, this article proposes, first, to critically assess its existing international human rights law framework; second, to interpret the newly re-discovered human right to science so as to re-ground academic freedom primarily (albeit not exclusively) therein as the "freedom indispensable for scientific research" guaranteed by Article 15(3) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; and, third, to draw various implications for academic freedom's right-holders, duty-bearers and scope. It argues that some of the reasons for academic freedom's neglect in international human rights law lie in what makes the human interest and responsibility in science unique, and hence in the specificities academic freedom shares with the human right to science more generally: first, that right's personal and institutional dimensions and, when personal, its individual and collective nature; second, its amounting to both a freedom and a responsibility; and, third, its equal albeit differentiated application to scientists and non-scientists.
This paper interrogates the systemic enforcement failures in monitoring migrant fishers by critically examining the legal responsibilities of labour-sending and flag states within the framework of international human rights law, the law of the sea, and transnational labour regulation. Labour-sending states, while normatively empowered to regulate recruitment and working conditions through extraterritorial measures, frequently fail to meet their due diligence obligations due to institutional fragmentation and remittance-driven policy choices. Flag states, though vested with exclusive jurisdiction under Article 92 of UNCLOS, exploit open registries and fragmented oversight to evade enforcement, resulting in a profound accountability vacuum. Anchored in the principles of effective control, positive obligations, and structural injustice, this study shows how jurisdictional fragmentation enables states and private actors to circumvent liability, leaving migrant fishers in a persistent legal lacuna. The paper calls for a reconfiguration of the monitoring paradigm, shifting from fragmented, territorially bound enforcement to a polycentric model grounded in transnational legal accountability and binding obligations. Without structural change, the prevailing regime not only fails to prevent harm but structurally enables a transnational economy of exploitation at sea.
This column discusses the new Board-of-Peace (BoP) world order in the making and evaluates what role mid-sized and smaller states can take in it. Through a discussion of Venezuela, Palestine, Ukraine, sanctions against the ICC, and the crime of aggression negotiations, it argues that states that want to resist a BoP world in which money or might dictates “right”, must make more explicit efforts to build ties and trust between each other. This means eschewing double standards and misplaced arrogance, and instead fostering allegiances on the basis of equality between states and ensuring consistent application of international law. It also means understanding that double standards not only create a harm that is experienced in the moment but also have a corrosive effect in the whole system of international law and the institutions and courts that have been set up to safeguard it.
Human rights due diligence (HRDD) has become the pre-eminent norm in the business and human rights field. However, despite more than a decade of practice and the advent of mandatory HRDD (mHRDD) laws, evidence about how human rights due diligence (HRDD) has been undertaken by and for companies is still scarce. This article considers HRDD practice through interviews with 'regulatory intermediaries' - consultants who undertake HRDD for companies ('regulatory targets'). Three key insights emerge from this study. First, differences in the practices of regulatory intermediaries demonstrate the ambiguous and context-driven nature of HRDD. Second, power struggles between key actors with responsibilities for the implementation of HRDD create dangers of regulatory capture and inequitable sharing of cost burdens of HRDD. Third, competition between regulatory intermediaries, exacerbated by the advent of mHRDD laws, risks a downward spiral of professional standards. The empirical findings of this article are then used to inform broader debates about the potential and limitations of HRDD and mHRDD laws to enhance outcomes for rightsholders.
This article examines how governments invoke national security arguments and how the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) responds in cases concerning Article 1 of Protocol 7 (A1P7) of the European Convention on Human Rights. This provision guarantees procedural safeguards for the expulsion of lawful residents. Based on a systematic content analysis, this study finds that governments frequently raise national security concerns without substantiation. In most instances, the ECtHR has resisted deference to these claims, consistently upholding minimum procedural guarantees and insisting on their substantive application. This prevailing interpretation of the Court has, nevertheless, not yet reached its full potential for protection, being permeated by multiple limitations, a wide margin of appreciation, and a range of possible counterbalancing factors. In addition, the absence of determining violations of A1P7 in two recent cases may signal a shift – either improved governmental compliance or a more restrictive approach from the Court. While A1P7 jurisprudence currently offers relatively strong protection, the path towards enhanced safeguards appears unlikely, especially amid increased political pressure, as exemplified by the 2025 joint letter from nine States urging restraint on the Court's interpretative role in migration matters.
The annual SIM Peter Baehr lecture celebrates the founding of the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM) in 1981 and commemorates the late Peter Baehr, one of SIM's former directors and an eminent human rights scholar. The 2025 lecture was delivered by Jolien Schukking, Judge at the European Court of Human Rights held on 14 November 2025. The lecture was preceded by a symposium to mark the 75th anniversary of the ECHR, hosted by SIM, and organised in collaboration with the College voor de Rechten van de Mens, the Montaigne Centre for Rule of Law and Administration of Justice, and the Netherlands Network for Human Rights Research.
International experts, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and legal scholars have transformed the right not to be subjected to enforced disappearance into a legal tool against exclusionary migration policies such as pushbacks. This innovative approach intersects enforced disappearance and migration and goes beyond presenting pushbacks as violations of non-refoulement . The article traces and embeds this progressive intersection into a wider process of ‘humanrightization’ in law, politics, and the everyday. The article presents this intersection in two steps. It first outlines the creation of the right not to be subjected to enforced disappearance and its monitoring institutions as the result of a decade-long struggle of international experts, NGOs, and legal scholars. The article then shows how these ‘doctrinal entrepreneurs’ shaped the continuous evolution of rights related to enforced disappearance by making it relevant as an authoritative resource in the context of migration. References to pushbacks in concluding observations to State Party reports and general comments provided by international experts, written inputs to consultation procedures from NGOs, or journal articles by legal scholars in relation to the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) and the Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED) serve as examples of this discursive practice.
Climate change caused by the consumption of fossil fuels has a significant adverse impact on the enjoyment of human rights globally. Therefore, the energy transition from fossil fuels to renewable fuels is necessary to prevent the human rights violations. On the other hand, the production of fossil fuels is the prerequisite for enjoying many human rights, including the right to access energy and the right to development in highly fossil fuel-dependent countries (HFFDCs). Thus, fossil fuels have paradoxical effects for these countries in terms of human rights. Considering the existing paradox, how should the energy transition for these countries proceed? This article shows that, based on a human-centred approach, by adopting reverse thinking, the starting point and cornerstone of the energy transition shsould be human rights. Given that human rights and human development overlap significantly, the low Human Development Index (HDI) of most HFFDCs implies that many of the basic human rights of their citizens are not being realised. The energy transition of HFFDCs with low HDI can be realized in two stages. Since there is a positive relationship between the production of fossil fuels and HDI in the early stages of the transition, in order for HFFDCs vertical energy transition to take place, their HDI must reach the average desired level (0.7) through the production of fossil fuels. When the right to development and the right to access energy are realised, due to the negative relationship between the HDI and fossil fuel use in the next stage, a horizontal energy transition could occur subsequently by phasing out fossil fuels.
The United Nations is facing a financial emergency so acute that it threatens not only the day-to-day functioning of its institutions but also the very architecture of the multilateral human rights system. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the institutional anchor of global rights protection, recently announced a shortfall of around US $60 million in its core budget, having received only US $179 million of the US $246 million allocated for 2025. Extra-budgetary funding, on which many of its programmes rely, has simultaneously been cut by another US $60 million. These are not abstract numbers: they translate into treaty bodies forced to cancel sessions for the first time in their history, special rapporteurs restricted to a single country visit each year, and commissions of inquiry struggling to secure the staff and resources needed to investigate atrocities. The crisis raises an unsettling question – are we witnessing a temporary budgetary glitch, or the beginning of a deeper unraveling, in which states no longer have the political will to sustain the human rights project they created? This column takes up that question by tracing the roots of the UN's financial shortfall, examining its immediate and long-term consequences, situating it against pre-existing weaknesses in the system, and exploring whether its timing – coinciding with an increasingly hostile global environment for human rights – is mere coincidence or symptomatic of a more profound shift. It concludes with reflections on survival: not through unbounded expansion, but through consolidation, reform, and above all, solidarity.
