Our research
Our project revisits questions of what qualifies as a human rights violation, who holds human rights duties and how to deliver human rights accountability, in the context of pressing and complex challenges.
To answer these questions, our team of researchers from a variety of backgrounds and experiences is exploring three tracks: within the domain of human rights law, but also in other domains of the law, and beyond the legal realm.
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Towards a Thicker Notion of Human Rights Accountability
Ben Grama’s postdoctoral research project seeks to synthesise the findings from the IBOF projects. Ben works to foster interdisciplinary collaborations between researchers on human rights accountability and to produce new cross-cutting insights from very disparate topics and areas. It starts from the perspective of identifying key choices, dilemmas, and trade-offs in current approaches with the ultimate ambition of producing a normatively anchored, contextually sensitive, and empirically grounded conception (or conceptions) of accountability.
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Arts and accountability in the Syrian and Palestinian context
Brigitte Herremans’ postdoctoral research project investigates the relation between arts and accountability in the Syrian and Palestinian contexts. In the Syrian context, she explores how informal practices, in the artistic domain and civil society realm, can counter the erasure and invisibilisation of injustices. In the Palestinian context, she examines how contemporary literary writing can provide a complementary layer to legal and criminal accountability initiatives. In both cases, the project aims to uncover the complementarity between artistic practices and accountability efforts, looking how cultural production can enrich the understanding of accountability and contribute to truth-seeking, memorialization and documentation.
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Indigenous notions, discourses and practices on human rights accountability: a case study on oil violence and ecoterritorial conflict in the Peruvian Amazon
The project empirically explores the case of half a century of extractivist violence in Peru’s historical oil circuit and of two decades of indigenous resistance in this part of the Amazon. The project is interdisciplinary in nature, and primarily builds on a decade-long engagement with grassroots/indigenous organizations and on empirical field work, to gain a deeper understanding of indigenous notions, discourses and practices in relation to accountability and (various) duty bearers in this emblematic case.
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Process-based review at the European Court of Human Rights – towards greater legal accountability?
Harriet’s PhD research focuses on the ‘procedural turn’ at the European Court of Human Rights and in particular, the Court’s increasing reliance on process-based review. Process-based review can be defined as ‘judicial reasoning that assesses public authorities’ decision making in light of procedural fundamental rights standards’ (Huijbers, 2021). Closely linked with the principle of subsidiarity and the margin of appreciation, it has become an increasingly established part of the Court’s jurisprudential toolkit since the adoption of Protocol 15 in 2013 (entered into force 2021). Harriet’s research seeks to map the application of process-based review in the Court’s caselaw, to understand how and why this approach is adopted in specific cases and to examine the implications of this development for legal accountability for human rights in Europe.
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Resolving economic and social rights dilemmas during structural crises
Marion’s PhD research investigates how judicial bodies resolve economic and social rights dilemmas during structural crises. She intends to develop a schema that facilitates a more satisfactory and coherent approach to resolving such dilemmas. This aims to give decision-makers a greater lever in enhancing accountability on economic and social rights in crisis situations. By doing so, it is hoped that the project will contribute to further operationalise the obligations and the transformative potential arising from economic and social rights.
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Defining accountability for micromanagement practices in the digital age: the case of rewarding citizens’ behavior through digital applications
Cristina’s research focuses on the interplay between technological systems used by public administration and fundamental rights, with a particular zoom on Europe. Her research delves into topics that range from the use of human rights as a framework to assess the negative implications of Artificial Intelligence systems to the idea of new rights in the digital. Within the project, her PhD thesis focuses on unexplored practices involving the use of digital systems by public administration to influence the behavior of citizens. She investigates what accountability issues are raised by the use of these systems and how these issues, and thus accountability for wrongs occurring in this context, can be improved.