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I wrote my PhD towards the last days of the debate over “social rights”. This debate harkens back to the fifties, when the International Covenant on Social and Cultural Rights was being negotiated. Some claimed that social rights could never be true rights. Others claimed that without social rights...

Over 30 states and 40 business and civil society groups debated strategies for affordable and sustainable medicines prices at last month’s second WHO Fair Pricing Forum—co-sponsored by the government of South Africa.

Marital captivity, which describes a situation in which one or both spouses are not able to terminate a religious marriage and thereby is forced to remain married against her or his will, is an issue that has been receiving national and international attention.

Universality is the idea that universal facts exist and can be progressively discovered, whereas relativism denies the existence of universal facts. It follows that universality presupposes a system of universal values applicable to all human beings, which is denied by relativism.

Those of you who were old enough to follow news headlines in the 90’s will probably remember this quote. For those of you who don’t: it is a famous phrase used by the defence team of O.J. Simpson in an – as would later turn out: successful – attempt to convince the jury of O.J.’s innocence.

25 years after the Genocide Against the Tutsi, the denial of this genocide still poses a serious challenge to prevention and reconciliation. How to address this problem was one of the central questions discussed during a recent commemorative conference in the Peace Palace.

What does the retrial of genocide convict Augustin Ngirabatware mean for international criminal law and the victims of the 1994 genocide?

Expensive medicines are a ubiquitous challenge from which no government is immune. Excessive price hikes are an urgent human rights issue with serious ramifications for public health. One such example is that of Truvada (emtricitabine/tenofovir disoproxil fumarate), a breakthrough medicine that can...

UN treaty bodies are committees of independent experts in charge of monitoring state compliance with the major UN human rights treaties. Yet, how far are these committee members truly expert and independent from their home governments, considering that they are nominated and elected by states?

This post opines that the universalist/relativist debate on human rights is not as divisive as it initially seems – rather than to undermine universalism in its entirety, cultural relativism serves as a reminder to constantly re-evaluate our assumptions on human rights to promote inclusivity.