Latest blog articles

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.

The debate around the universality of human rights is legitimate and long-lasting. While most people instantly think of cultural and religious relativity, invoking the sharia and indigenous traditions as obstacles to universality, new forms of questioning universality - and even human rights in...

Over the past decades, universality as the cornerstone of human rights has been constantly challenged by non-western societies. Legitimacy and western political hegemony intent are the underlying grounds. In the battle between universality and cultural relativism, which one should prevail?

Recent scholarship has suggested that cognitive biases shape the processing of any information about mass atrocities, essentially pushing individuals (at an unconscious level) to believe what they want to believe and reason about the ICTY and its work in a way that is most protective of their own...

The 70^th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 25^th anniversary of the Maastricht Centre for Human Rights are a landmark in the development of human rights and a source of inspiration for academic research on new global human rights issues.

Seventy years to the day have passed since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted. International human rights have since gained ground in theory, discourse, and practice. In this short post, I argue that for human rights to regain some of their traction, we should take care not to use...

As you may or may not know, Cyprus is a divided island. While the south of the island is governed by the internationally recognized Republic of Cyprus, the north is governed by the "Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus", an internationally unrecognized state.

The subject of rights status of children is still an international legal stipulation without substantive national implementation. Statistics on violence against children remain incredibly high all over the world, including in high-income states. There exists not only a huge gap between theory and...

The dreaded “No Deal” is becoming ever-more plausible

With the summer holidays about to end, Brexit negotiations between the European Union and United Kingdom will resume in earnest. The question on everyone’s mind is simple: Will there be a deal or will the United Kingdom leave the European Union...