Human Rights @ Lund

Hidden Inequalities: A Study on Understanding the Differences of Women’s Labour Rights in Sweden and Kosovo

A woman working in front of a computer desk.

At the Human Rights Lunch Online 24 April 2026, Miranda Kajtazi, Associate professor at the Department of Informatics togehter with project colleagues Erdelina Kurti, Venera Demukaj and Mimoza Polloshka, presented their initial findings of two expert roundtables that were funded with seed money from the Human Rights Profile Area. Watch the recording of the seminar on Youtube:

Cultural expressions often show the contours of social struggle. Iconic songs such as Aretha Franklin’s Respect, Beyoncé’s Run the World (Girls), and Billie Eilish’s My Power resonate across homes, cafés, schools, workplaces, and public spaces. These artistic forms echo demands for justice and equality towards women, capturing the dynamics of gendered power that increasingly unfold within digital environments (Isin & Ruppert, 2020). Their collective message resonates with foundational feminist critiques. Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949) exposes the injustice of reducing women to reproductive objects. Similarly, the advocacy of human rights defenders such as Nobel laureate Narges Mohammadi highlights the systematic denial of dignity and freedom. This moral critique is further reinforced by economic research, including the work of Nobel laureates in economics, Clauda Goldin on gender pay gaps, shows that this pay gap largely occurs within the same occupations and grows over time, particularly after parenthood (Bolotnikova, 2016).

Yet despite such cultural and intellectual legacies, gender inequality remains deeply rooted. Women across the world continue to face discrimination, violence, harassment, illiteracy, and poverty (Acilar & Sæbø, 2021). In digital contexts, these inequalities manifest as limited agency, uneven access, and constrained digital capabilities (Williams et al., 2023). Digital inequalities—deeply socio-technical by nature—challenge fairness and inclusiveness (Vassilakopoulou & Hustad, 2021), hinder democratic work structures (Mumford, 2006), and impede the development of digital literacy and skills (Venkatesh & Sykes, 2013). Those positioned at the intersections of low socio-economic status, geographic marginalisation, and restrictive socio-cultural norms face the most severe barriers to digital access and meaningful use (Acilar & Sæbø, 2021; Williams et al., 2023).

Starting our narrative through the voices of artists and human rights activists is intentional. Many of these women have personally endured discrimination and digital incivility (Yadin et al., 2023), often receiving hostility rather than the online social support that is crucial for well-being (Pai, 2023). Their collective refusals to accept domination have animated global digital movements that amplify women’s voices—particularly in Western settings (Williams et al., 2023). However, these global narratives remain incomplete. Discussions on women’s empowerment, do not always include perspectives from places like Kosovo in the Western Balkans.

This project therefore provides a new perspective by foregrounding the experiences of women in Kosovo vis-à-vis Sweden, particularly in the booming sector of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). While in Sweden the checklist is clear, we find that women in Kosovo navigate multiple structural barriers: unequal access to advanced digital skills, challenges in translating education into labour market opportunities, and limited employment opportunities. Yet, the ICT sector emerges as a site of women empowerment. ICT in Kosovo has expanded security, awareness, and employment opportunities for women. It also holds the potential to enhance women’s labour rights as seen in Sweden, but in the Kosovo context, we find that labour-rights enforcement remains weak. While the ICT sector has the potential to be associated with stronger labour rights, as seen in Sweden, implementation gaps remain in Kosovo, especially regarding protections for women including care-related and family support policies.

It is precisely this asymmetry that makes a comparative analysis between ICT sectors in Sweden and Kosovo both timely and necessary. This seed-funded project held two expert round-tables (the Prishtina roundtable and the Lund roundtable) to discuss the asymmetries. To highlight our findings, our starting point is grounded in a comparative approach toward understanding the ICT labour position of Sweden and Kosovo. We first identify that Sweden ranks among the top five countries on the Human Development Index (HDI), where robust labour protections, strong welfare institutions, and gender-equitable ICT workplaces are key. Kosovo on the other end, is ranked near the bottom in Europe, with labour laws referencing ILO conventions only superficially and non-discrimination provisions are still in draft form. Many women in Kosovo enter the ICT sector in the expectation of more equitable treatment; however, gaps in implementation of labour rights, work-family policies, and workplace protections persist. Despite this, ICT is often perceived as more progressive than other sectors, offering women glimpses of fair labour and equality.

Nevertheless, both contexts demonstrate the transformative potential of ICT. In Sweden, one in eight jobs is already in ICT, with a projected growth of 18–25% by 2027. Kosovo, despite resource constraints and institutional instability, hosts over 2,000 ICT companies and has experienced nearly 300% sectoral growth in recent years. More than 50% of girls enroll in ICT programmes, with approximately 30% pursuing ICT careers. Thus, the ICT sector serves as a vital empirical site for interrogating the intersections of gender, labour rights, and digital transformation.

At its core, this seed-funded project aims to understand how the growth of employment in the ICT sector can support not only access to jobs, but also more equitable labour conditions and outcomes.

Our expert roundtables reveal a key message. ICT sector alone is not sufficient to create justice or equality for women. But as digital technologies and AI specifically continue to shape economies, governance and everyday life, participation of women in ICT sector goes beyond representation, and more about ensuring that these systems are more equitable, inclusive, and contribute to diverse needs. Hence, in the contemporary world, justice cannot be imagined without addressing how such sectors that are booming, shape women’s work and their rights, particularly in contexts like Kosovo. This is where our project takes a deeper look.

In Sweden, ICT sector sits within a strong human‑rights and labour‑rights framework—supported by childcare, eldercare, equal parental leave, and effective enforcement. Kosovo presents a different reality. Labour rights are formally in place, but enforcement may be uneven. EU alignment on non‑discrimination remains in draft. In light of this contrast, four action points emerged that would benefit the context of Kosovo from a policy development perspective:

Continuous Role Model Presence

Policy efforts could further strengthen the inclusion of role models and expand their reach across urban and rural settings. Strengthening the visibility and reach of women in ICT—particularly beyond urban centres—is essential to inspire participation across diverse groups. Role models, including supportive men, play a crucial role in challenging stereotypes and motivating women to pursue ICT careers.

Retaining Women in the Labour Market

Policy efforts to sustain women’s participation in the labour market should be supported through systemic measures, including: accessible childcare, extended school hours, effective implementation of parental-leave regulations, and targeted measures for marginalised groups. At the same time, the development of the ICT sector should be grounded in gender sensitivity policy frameworks to help prevent the reproduction of existing social and structural inequalities.

Advancing Women Empowerment in the ICT sector

Advancing women empowerment requires coordinated policy, including efforts to address gender stereotypes, and strengthening mentoring systems with an emphasis on partnership and support, aligning with the frameworks established by various agencies. In addition, improving digital safety, and addressing educational bias further supports women’s successful progression into ICT fields.

From Conformist and Reformist Implications towards Transformative Implications

Long-term goals towards transformative implications depend on robust institutional mechanisms. This includes advancing labour‑law reforms including regulating childcare and elderly care provisions. Equality boards, gender-aware governance, and cross‑sector partnerships form the structural backbone for promoting labour rights and gender equality should be brought into action towards changing perspective from a conformist and a reformist attitude, towards a transformative one.

Miranda Kajtazi¹, Erdelina Kurti², Venera Demukaj³, and Mimoza Polloshka³

Lund University¹; Linnaeus University²; Rochester Institute of Technology Kosovo³

References:

Acilar, A. and Sæbø, Ø., 2023. Towards understanding the gender digital divide: A systematic literature review. Global knowledge, memory and communication, 72(3), pp.233-249.

Bolotnikova, M. N. (2016). Reassessing the gender wage gap. Harvard Magazine. https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2016/04/reassessing-the-gender-wage-gap

de Beauvoir, S. (1949) The Second Sex. Paris: Gallimard.

Isin, E. and Ruppert, E. (2020). Being digital citizens. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Mumford, E., 2006. The story of socio‐technical design: Reflections on its successes, failures and potential. Information systems journal, 16(4), pp.317-342.

Pai, P., 2023. Becoming a mother: A role learning perspective on the use of online community resources to facilitate a life-role transition. Information & Management, 60(8), p.103861.

Vassilakopoulou, P. and Hustad, E., 2023. Bridging digital divides: A literature review and research agenda for information systems research. Information Systems Frontiers, 25(3), pp.955-969.

Venkatesh, V., and Sykes, T.A. 2013. “Digital Divide Initiative Success in Developing Countries: A Longitudinal Field Study in a Village in India,” Information Systems Research (24:2), pp. 239-260.

Williams, H., Faith, B. and Waldman, L., 2023. Technologies of inclusion and marginalization: Mobile phones and multiple exclusion homeless women. Mobile Media & Communication, p.20501579231211498.

Yadin, D., Yahav, I., Zalmanson, L. and Munichor, N., 2023. Resolving the Ethical Tension Between Creating a Civil Environment and Facilitating Free Expression Online: Comment Reordering as an Alternative to Comment Moderation. Journal of Business Ethics, pp.1-23.

Women in Tech Kosovo

https://techsverige.se/en/2024/12/ny-rapport-tech-fortsatt-grundpelare-for-svensk-ekonomi-och-jobb

https://thefoundationhouse.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Annual-Report-2023-final-1.pdf

17 April 2026

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Artificial Intelligence and Asylum Decision-Making: Any Role for Human Rights Law?

By Vladislava Stoyanova

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly shaping migration, asylum, and border governance by introducing forms of automated decision-making. Although such technologies promise greater efficiency, their use in asylum procedures raises significant human rights concerns, particularly because the individuals affected are often in highly vulnerable situations. The EU AI Act therefore categorises the use of AI in asylum procedures as a high-risk application. This report ‘Artificial Intelligence and Asylum Decision-Making: Any Role for Human Rights Law?’ published by the Swedish Delegation for Migration Studies, assesses whether AI-assisted decision-making in asylum cases is compatible with human rights law, focusing in particular on the rights to privacy and protection against refoulement.

The study highlights the challenges involved in establishing a causal link between potential harm and the use of AI systems in asylum procedures. It argues that these difficulties can be addressed by conceptualising the harm primarily as procedural harm. From this perspective, particular attention must be paid to procedural guarantees, including the quality and reliability of decision-making processes, timeliness, effectiveness, institutional independence, the participation of affected individuals, and the transparency of the reasoning underlying decisions. When AI tools are used in asylum procedures, these safeguards become especially important, including meaningful involvement of applicants and clear explanations of decisions that affect them.

One central difficulty is that asylum authorities generally lack reliable mechanisms to verify whether their decisions – such as granting or refusing protection – were substantively correct. Because outcomes cannot easily be validated, there is little reliable feedback that could be used as test data for evaluating AI systems, either during their development or after deployment. In addition, historical datasets used to train such systems may have limited value in predicting future risks in applicants’ countries of origin.

The report underscores that new technologies may themselves transform the practice of asylum law. This transformation is plausible given the growing importance of data, the choices involved in selecting and structuring that data, and the influential role of programmers in designing algorithms.

As a result, decision-making authority may gradually shift away from the discretion traditionally exercised by individual asylum officers toward discretion embedded in the design and operation of technological systems.

Report: Artificial Intelligence and Asylum Decision-Making (Link to Delmi website, new tab)

Vladislava Stoyanova is Associate Professor of Public International Law at the Faculty of Law, Lund University (Sweden). Vladislava is the holder of the Wallenberg Academy Fellowship (2021-2026) awarded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. As a Wallenberg Fellow, she leads the project ‘The Borders within: the Multifaceted Legal Landscape of Migrant Integration in Europe.’

9 March 2026

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In the shadow of a legacy – Iran after a long 20th centruy

By Rouzbeh Parsi

This is an edited and translated version of the epilogue to Rouzbeh Parsi’s book Mellan Gud och stat. Iran efter ett långt 1900-tal. (Book title in English: Between God and State. Iran After a Long 20th Century.) Fri Tanke, 2025.

Welcome to this event on 8 April 2026, where the book will be presented and discussed. More details can be found on the event page.

The question of what kind of society Iran should be has characterised the country’s 20th-century history and is common to all societies around the world that underwent radical modernisation during the last century. It is and remains an open question. The 1978-79 revolution set Iran on its current course, but it would be naive to conclude that the old society was thereby destroyed and replaced by entirely new dogmas, ideas and norms.

However, the political elite’s inability to renew itself is becoming increasingly fatal. In some respects, this inability is inherent in the Islamic Republic’s way of governing (or misgoverning), while in other respects it is linked to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s personal inability to choose a course of action. In other words, the Republic’s decision-making capacity is severely lacking. There are parts of the elite that can both make a more accurate diagnosis of the system’s shortcomings and even propose alternative solutions, but so far they have been unable to assert themselves against those parts of the elite that want to preserve and safeguard the system in its current form.

The Islamic Republic has learned its lesson about how to retain the power of the monarchy it overthrew, but the revolutionary project is much more dependent on the participation of the population in order to be realised than the Shah’s vision for a modern Iran ever was. For the republic, it is partly a question of legitimacy and partly a question of the system’s self-image as having sprung from the people – for the people. The republic is far more participatory than the monarchy ever was, but it is also more violent than the monarchy ever dared to be. The republic’s inability to resolve the crucial issues facing Iranian society is its Achilles heel.

The result of this mismanagement is a steady erosion of the state’s legitimacy in the eyes of its citizens. The inability to combat corruption within its own ranks and to reach a truce with the United States that could open up trade to the global market is making the country even poorer and, more fatally, more unequal. The bloody suppression of protests in december 2025/january 2026 has militarised the conflict with society and theIslamic Republic, having lost most of its legitimacy, is now also losing its authority.

At this point in this jeremiad, someone will exclaim: ‘That is why the Islamic Republic will fall!’ It is not that simple. Conditions and systems that we may consider completely illegitimate, intolerable and “ought to” collapse often survive longer than anyone would want to contemplate. And if any change occurs at the systemic level, it will probably not happen in a dramatic way. It is unusual for systems to give up, as in East Germany, where an ageing leadership without popular support imploded and the people’s desire for freedom peacefully resulted in a democratic form of government. More common is what happened in Romania, for example, where popular protests only achieved results when the military abandoned the political leadership and thus sealed its fate. In other words, a shift in the balance of power within the state apparatus and the security services was required.

This does not mean that the people and the outside world are powerless in the face of the outcome of the drama. But as long as the opposition cannot win by force of arms, it must identify those parts of the political elite that are willing to negotiate and compromise with them. Such a transitional solution is based precisely on the realisation that the old elite possesses formidable capacity for violence, but lacks legitimacy. The opposition, for its part, lacks the former, but possesses the latter. If the opposition can unite, literally by mobilising people for demonstrations, and politically by agreeing on a list of demands and a vision for what should replace the existing regime, it can try to negotiate with those within the old regime who want change and are willing to work for it from within. This does not guarantee success, but it reduces the risk of bloodshed – at the cost of not bringing to justice, for the time being, all those who deserve to be tried for their abuses against their fellow citizens.

To achieve change in the present, we must also reflect on the past. Just as each individual benefits from knowing their past, their family and their family history in order to gain clarity about themselves, societies and states need a historiography that can provide a framework for understanding who they are and where they come from. In this way, the writing of history is an important element in the construction of the self, a self-image and a self-understanding. This image is almost always authentic to the person in question – without necessarily being true.

The state is not particularly interested in the scientifically humble attitude that better, i.e. more nuanced, explanations are likely to emerge the more we examine the past. This does not mean that these chronologies and explanations of historical events are by definition false or untruthful. But their overall purpose, the logic of the narrative, is to instil confidence in citizens about the nation and the community of destiny to which the individual belongs, voluntarily or not. What gives national narratives their strength are the slightly transcendental qualities and dimensions that are infused into more or less true historical events.

The coup d’état in Iran in 1953 and the revolution in 1978-1979 are key events that are interpreted very differently by different groups. On the one hand, there is a conflict about what really happened and, on the other, about what it led to. Was 1953 an anti-democratic victory that paved the way for the revolution, or was it a rescue from a possible communist future? Addressing these kinds of key points in the historiography that most people in a country relate to and rely on requires collective soul-searching. It requires a society that is prepared to confront difficult, painful and traumatic memories and events whose significance we do not agree on. This is what is known in German as Vergangenheitsbewältigung. The concept has its origins in the German need to process, examine and come to terms with the guilt and responsibility for the Second World War and the Holocaust. Taking responsibility for one’s history means, among other things, seeing it in its entirety, not just the edifying and successful parts. This is not necessarily something one undertakes voluntarily or lightly, but in the long run it is important in order to be able to create social peace. Such a more representative, collective historiography is also necessary for the creation of a more democratic society. In the German case, this insight did not come out of the blue. It was both imposed by the Allies and an inevitable self-examination in order to build a new Germany.

As in Germany after 1945, there is a societal trauma in Iran after 1953 and 1979. The causes and consequences of the coup d’état and the Iranian revolution need to be discussed in a more sophisticated way. Like all important historical events, they are subject to many different interpretations and are read by individuals and groups with different reasons and purposes. It is not surprising that this set of interpretations also changes over time. The purpose of a more transparent conversation about the revolution and its legacy is not for everyone involved to agree. The goal is more modest: that they learn to engage with and deal with their shared history in a more knowledge-based and constructive way – that they talk to each other instead of threatening and excluding each other.

The problem, then, is not the diversity of narratives and historiographies. From a democratic perspective, the problem is rather fact-resistant and ideological narratives in which those who advocate one interpretation or another of Iran’s history refuse to even participate in conversations where different perspectives can be debated and discussed. Precisely because many of these histories are rooted in trauma, there is a clear need for Iranian Vergangenheitsbewältigung. Many of those who opposed the revolution or lost the struggle for it would first need to examine their own histories in order to then be able to address all the blind spots in the official history advocated by the Islamic Republic. What makes Iranian politics so explosive for the diaspora is precisely the lack of dialogue about historical experiences and what they mean for the country and its people today. Is this just a hobbyhorse that I insist on because I am a historian? No. If we cannot agree on, or even discuss, what happened in recent history, it is difficult to see how Iranians in Iran and in the diaspora will be able to tackle the much bigger question in a rational and democratic way: the future.

R.P

Berlin, August 2025 – abridged and slightly updated February 2026

Rouzbeh Parsi is a historian and foreign policy analyst with a PhD on modernity, nationalism, and gender in interwar Iran. He has helped establish the Human Rights programme at Lund University and is currently a visiting lecturer at the Division of Human Rights. Rouzbeh has held senior roles in foreign policy analysis at the EU Institute for Security Studies and the Swedish Institute of International Affairs.

4 March 2026

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Human Rights Lunch Online: Rights of future generations – questions of law, politics and morality

During the Human Rights Lunch Online seminar on 30st January 2026 , Martin Scheinin, visiting professor at the Faculty of Law and previous United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism (2005–2011), presented on the rights of future generations.

Watch the recording on Youtube:

Professor Martin Scheinin, Lund University and European University Institute

In international human rights law, the subject, or ‘beneficiary’, of a human right is usually thought of as a born and currently living person, an individual human being. That said, human rights law does recognise the category of collective rights, as well as the concept of human dignity that represents a universal value underlying the whole catalogue of specific human rights of individuals.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) clearly was written as a future-oriented document of moral, political and legal (in this order) relevance. While its Article 1 opens with the phrase “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” (emphasis added), the preceding Preamble includes notions such as “the human family” and “the dignity and worth of the human person” which may be interpreted to extend the moral foundations of human rights beyond individual rights that can be exercised between birth and death. The understadning of individual rights belonging to born and living individuals is visible across human rights treaties, with one exception in the American Convention of Human Rights where the right to life provision includes the phrase “from the moment of conception”, reflecting a strong influence of religious Catholic thinking.

Collective rights – rights that will be exercised by a group of people jointly, such as by a family, minority or trade union, or by an even larger group, such as the right to self-determination as a people have been included in some but not all human rights treaties, with the effect of extending the protection of human rights beyond the vertical relationship between a state and one individual. No human rights treaty addresses the individual or collective rights of members of future generations. International treaties in the field of environmental law, however, do make references to future generations, particuarly new treaties written in the age of climate change.

In moral philosophy (see section 2 of the linked Stanford Encyclopedia article), some authors are prepared to widen the scope of subjects of rights to sentient animals, other animals, any living organisms or even some other natural objects, such as a river or a mountain. In contrast, some other philosophers focus on the concept of a right and only attribute rights to persons with autonomy and agency, being prepared to deny human rights to small children or persons with severe disabilities.

In 2023, a consultation and drafting process between international human rights experts – lawyers and others – culminated in the adoption of the Maastricht Principles on the Human Rights of Future Generations. The document amounts to a careful , comprehensive and analytically structured mapping of many conceptual and legal aspects of the question. In my view, it nevertheless suffers of a couple of less careful shortcuts, for which reference is made to first two paragraphs of the Introduction, paragraph II of the Preamble, Article 2.1 and Article 4 (c). As a consequence, the document is conceptually weak.

That said, the Maastricht Principles may prove more valuable elsewhere, as a high-quality mapping exercise, rather than as an actual operationalisation of rights of future generations in international human rights law. Specifically, its merits are in Part II on state obligations that lists types and categories of obligations, duty-bearers, types of violations of rights and the attribution of them to duty-bearers, and consequences of (remedies for) such violations.

The ongoing climate crisis has resulted in increased attention to the question whether future generations, as individuals or collectively, have human rights that have consequences in terms of law, morality or politics. The two first successful climate change cases before international human rights bodies, i.e., the UN Human Rights Committee case of indigenous Torres Strait Islanders (Daniel Billy et al. v. Australia) and the European Court of Human Rights case of an association of senior Swiss ladies (KlimaSeniorinnen v. Switzerland) came to rely on the notion of rights of future generations in establishing that the two states in question were in breach of their legally binding human rights obligations. That said, and as will be explained in the presentation, the two judgments are fundamentally different.

Even if the two different judgments both rely on extending the reach of human rights to include issues related to future generations (even if not necessarily as violations of the rights of members of future gnerations), they reflect two different strategies of climate change litigation. Where KlimaSeniorinnen was about using human rights fora to enforce states’ climate change obligations under international environmental law, Billy was about whether consequences of climate climate change amount to human rights violations.

Having been involved in the Billy case as author of an amicus brief, I belong to the latter camp. I also served as counsel in the next two successful climate change cases before UN human rights treaty bodies, this time the Committee on the Rights of the Child (M.E.V. et al. v. Finland) and the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (J.T. et al. v. Finland). Both Committee’s referred to future generations and to climate change, and Finland was found to have violated both treaties in repect of the rights of the indigenous Sámi community of the Kova-Labba siida. These three cases have demonstrated how indigenous peoples’ rights, due to the transgenerational nature of the right of indigenous peoples to enjoy their culture, including by inheriting it from earlier generations and passing it on to new and future ones, are particularly well-suited for the formulation human rights clames concerning rights of future generations. This does not, however, entail that other groups, situated similarly or analogously to indigenous peoples in respect of ongoing climate change, could not build upon the success by indigenous peoples when formulating their own claims with aspects concerning future generations.

A major lesson from the three successful UN-level cases is that the concept of rights of future generations is not equally operative in respect of all human rights. The right of minorities, including indigenous peoples, to enjoy their own culture as a community has come to spearhead the operationalisation of rights of future generations. This is simply because of the transgenerational nature of cultures: they are inherited from past generations, enjoyed, developed and adjusted by current ones and passed on to next and future generations. It is inherent in the nature of a culture that a right and a practical possibiity to pass it on to new generations is a central dimension of the recognised right of currently living individuals to enjoy the right to their own culture in community with others.

Some other candidates where the concept of rights of future generations appears likely to be operationalised are the right to private and family life, the right to identity, and the right to equality if interpreted to include the right to be treated differently.

In March 2023, the most authoritative international court, the International Court of Justice established by the United Nations Charter, received a request by the UN General Assembly for an Advisory Opinion on two interrelated questions, the first one of which was: “What are the obligations of States under international law to ensure the protection of the climate system and other parts of the environment from anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases for States and for present and future generations?” The second question was about the consequences of breaches of such state obligations, including with respect to “Peoples and individuals of the present and future generations affected by the adverse effects of climate change?”

The interest of states, international organisations and civil society actors in the ICJ proceedings was unprecedented, resulting in a whole library of written submissions and two weeks of oral hearings. The Advisory Opinion, issued on 23 July 2025 is important and informative as to the status of international law but very cautious what comes to the extension of international human rights law to include rights of future generations. One could even say that the Court failed to address the second question as quoted above.

22 January 2026

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Human Rights Lunch Online: “But I do this because there is no one else who is doing it”. Young transgender and nonbinary people as affect aliens in school

12 December 2025 at 12:15 – 13:00. Bring your lunch and join the seminar on Zoom: https://lu-se.zoom.us/j/65437566996.

Irina Schmitt is a senior lecturer in gender studies at Lund University. Irina’s research focuses on trans- and queer-feminist educational research with a focus on organizations where knowledge is produced and the national is inscribed, such as schools and colleges. Irina will present on the topic during Human Rights Lunch Online 12 December 2025 and share reflections from a study with trans pupils in Swedish schools.

In interviews with a heterogeneous group of 13 young trans people about their experiences in schools in Sweden, participants discussed how (some) adults in schools assigned emotional responsibility to them to manage possible tensions when these young people claimed space or asked for support. I am curious about such processes of assigning emotional responsibility to gender nonconforming students. How do affective signals that adults in schools give young trans people – such as confusion and rejection – inform a sense of intelligibility and probability in the now? How do the participants respond?

I situate this analysis in intersectional genealogies of queer- and transfeminist education research, engaging studies on gender nonconforming young people and critical queer and transfeminist analyses of emotions and of being young. I take cues from Sara Ahmed’s analysis of “affect aliens” in The Promise of Happiness (2010), who see through the reasons of their othering and build the willingness to resist and to change. How can the concept of the affect alien help us understand the experiences of the participants, in a setting where rights are codified but not lived? Ahmed argues for a careful re-evaluation of unhappiness as assigned to queer-ness and queer bodies in the eyes of others, not least parents. This holds the possibility for a “revolutionary consciousness” for Ahmed, the willingness to resist and to change. In this seminar, I will explore this revolutionary potential in the material.

Picture of Irina Schmitt. — Photograph by Sarah Hirani.

While this analysis focuses on the context of school, I hope it can be understood in a wider discursive context, where the figure of the “trans child” (a category that encompasses young people and young adults) is laden with affect.

Irina Schmitt, senior lecturer in gender studies at Lund University.

2 December 2025

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Human Rights Lunch Online: Interdisciplinary Research on Cultural Rights and Disability in Kulturskolor

Children´s drawing. Photo by Renee Mitchell on Unsplash.

During the Human Rights Lunch Online seminar on 21 November, Adriana Di Lorenzo Tillborg (Malmö Academy of Music, Lund University), Märtha Pastorek Gripson (Halmstad University), and Anna Johansson (Stockholm University) presented their interdisciplinary research initiative on how kulturskolor work to support the cultural rights of children and adolescents with disabilities.

Watch the recording on Youtube:

Their project brings together three distinct academic fields—music education, aesthetics and innovation, and special education—in a unique collaboration. This combination is new in the context of research on cultural rights for children with disabilities. Special education, as they highlight, is itself an interdisciplinary field, drawing from pedagogy, psychology, sociology, and teaching and learning.

Their research aimed to deepen our understanding of how the cultural rights of pupils with disabilities are addressed in kulturskolor. These rights are anchored in Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 31 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Despite this, children with disabilities often face barriers to participation in cultural life—even within kulturskolor, which are publicly funded institutions offering creative education in various art forms in 286 of Sweden’s 290 municipalities.

The researchers identified a clear need for network meetings between practitioners and researchers to address these challenges. Existing research in this area is limited, mostly focused on music education, and lacks interdisciplinary perspectives.

Drawing on their own teaching backgrounds—dance (Märtha), drama (Anna), and music (Adriana)—the team used these three subjects as a foundation for their literature review and for engaging with the practice field from multiple perspectives, which can enhance the legitimacy and relevance of the research project.

The first step of the project involved mapping how kulturskolor offer adapted education to children and youth with disabilities.

This mapping began with two activities conducted in collaboration with the Council for kulturskolor during its annual conference in April 2025. The first was an interactive Mentimeter survey with all participating school leaders. The second consisted of two network meetings, each with fifteen school leaders, to discuss experiences and challenges. The Council had already agreed to the collaboration, and the conference provided an ideal setting to launch the initiative.

Following the conference, the researchers are in the process of organizing two or three meetings with school leaders and possibly teachers. This part of the process takes the network meetings as a starting point since the leaders interested in continuing the collaboration have provided their contact information.

This upcoming seminar will offer a chance to reflect on the findings, share insights, and discuss the next steps for research and practice. We look forward to welcoming everyone interested in cultural rights, inclusion, and the future of kulturskolor.

Adriana Di Lorenzo Tillborg is senior lecturer in music education at the Malmö Academy of Music, Lund University and member of the Human Rights Profile Area.

Märtha Pastorek Gripson is senior lecturer in aesthetics and innovation at Halmstad University.

Anna Johansson is senior lecturer in the Department of Special Education at Stockholm University.

21 November 2025

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Human Rights Lunch Online: The right to give rights – Welfare professionals as guardians of undocumented migrants’ human rights

Picture of a child in front of a tent camp.

On 17 October 2025 the Human Rights Lunch Online will welcome Jacob Lind from Malmö University. Human Rights Lunch Online is a digital meeting place organized by the Human Rights Profile Area. Bring your lunch and join us on Zoom at 12:15 – 13:00: https://lu-se.zoom.us/j/65437566996.

Picture of a child on a bike in front of of a tent area.

By Jacob Lind, Malmö University and Lund University

In my five-year ERC project starting January 2026 – The right to give rights. Welfare professionals as guardians of undocumented migrants’ human rights (GIVE RIGHTS) – I will investigate how welfare professionals across Europe view their role in providing undocumented migrants their human rights. The project is inspired by the collective contestations by unions and professional associations who together with large parts of the rest of civil society collectively protested against the Swedish Government’s proposal that welfare professionals of any kind should have a duty to report undocumented migrants. Thanks to these large protests, the government backed down and exempted health care, education, social work and most other sectors from being deputized to perform migration control.

Several decades ago, Hannah Arendt pointed out that universalistic understandings of human rights have little to offer noncitizens. Inspired by her, researchers have suggested that the foundation for undocumented migrants’ human rights instead can be found in the right-claims and contestations of migrants themselves. However, little attention has been paid to the role of welfare professionals in these processes.

Across Europe, throughout the last decades, welfare professionals have resisted proposals that they should have a duty to report undocumented migrants to the police. This has been pivotal for protecting migrants’ rights. Consequently, GIVE RIGHTS hope to develop new conceptual tools for an interdisciplinary understanding of undocumented migrants’ rights as rooted in an interplay between migrants’ rights-claims and welfare professionals’ attitudes, practices, and collective contestations – highlighting the underexamined relational character of rights. The project investigates the politics of undocumented migrants’ rights as an interplay between different actors with converging interests: Undocumented migrants want access to their human rights – in Arendt’s words they want to have a “right to have rights” – and welfare professionals do not want to act as extended border guards but have a “right to GIVE RIGHTS”.

GIVE RIGHTS will compare Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK where the protection of undocumented migrants’ access to rights are, or have recently been, undergoing intense negotiations. The project combines survey data with policy mapping, qualitative media analysis, participant observation, focus groups and expert interviews. Through my approach I hope to understand better what it takes for welfare professionals to collectively mobilize around an issue like undocumented migrants’ human rights across different societal contexts. To what extent are human rights of precariously positioned groups in society important for how welfare professionals choose to position themselves as societal actors collectively? When the human rights paradigm is being questioned on a political level, will welfare professionals stand up collectively as “guardians of human rights” or will they take another position? By answering questions like this, GIVE RIGHTS aims to contribute to theoretical and political debates on the future of human rights in Europe.

Jacob Lind is Project researcher at the Department of Global Political Studies at Malmö University and the Malmö Institute for Migration Studies (MIM). He is also a visiting researcher at the Sociology of Law Department at Lund University during autumn 2025. Jacob’s PhD examined the paradoxes of undocumented migrant children’s rights, vulnerability, and agency in Sweden and the UK. In spring 2025, Jacob completed a FORTE-funded postdoc at AMIS, Copenhagen University, on undocumented childhoods. Until Feb 2023, Jacob led Sweden’s team in the EU Horizon 2020 project MIMY on migrant youth integration. Between 2025–2028 Jacob leads the Swedish part of Practicing Hope (YouHope), a NordForsk-funded project on youth in super-diverse urban communities.

2 October 2025

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Law in the Climate Emergency: Entangled Legal Orders in the Inter-American Court’s Advisory Opinion OC-32/25

Anny Matamoros Pineda

Introduction

More than 600 actors contributed to shaping the Inter-American Court’s recent Advisory Opinion on the climate emergency, mobilizing a wide range of legal frameworks, including indigenous, national, regional, and international. This convergence underscores the need to examine how multiple normative orders interact beyond the nation-state and how they connect the local with the global. Today, this is explored through the lens of legal pluralism, which seeks to conceptualize these interactions and whose expressions are increasingly visible in transnational arenas. In this light, the Advisory Opinion is particularly significant, as it illustrates how a regional human rights court can bring diverse legal frameworks into dialogue, especially local ones, in responding to the climate emergency, a challenge of planetary scale.

Legal Pluralism and its Latin American Context

Legal pluralism questions the state-centered image of law as a single, unified system, highlighting instead the multiplicity of normative orders. As Antonio Wolkmer emphasizes, it rests on two dimensions: the coexistence of multiple legal orders that are activated by conflicts or consensuses within a given socio-political space, and the recognition that law does not emanate exclusively from the state apparatus.

Three main approaches can be identified. The first, the “classical” view, emerges from colonial and postcolonial contexts. The second shifts to non-colonial contexts and focuses on power relations within capitalist societies, showing how law operates through social, ethnic, and economic hierarchies. The third, postmodern legal pluralism, transcends the nation-state by incorporating infra-state dynamics (indigenous or community law) and supra-state dynamics (international human rights law). This third stage situates pluralism within transnational contexts.

Building on these typologies, John Griffiths distinguishes between “strong” legal pluralism, where non-state legal systems coexist with genuine autonomy, and “weak” legal pluralism, where the state recognizes other normative orders while preserving its primacy. The latter has predominated in Latin America, where state recognition of indigenous law is often subordinated to state structures. Nonetheless, Colombia, Ecuador, and Bolivia have incorporated pluralist dimensions to varying degrees, through multicultural, intercultural, and plurinational models, with the latter representing the most far-reaching form of recognition.

However, as Wolkmer points out, legal pluralism in Latin America is inscribed in a history marked by colonial legacies and persistent forms of authoritarianism, centralism, and dependency. Any pluralist proposal must address not only global and local structural transformations but also emerging “bottom-up” practices led by subjects and collectives in contexts of exclusion. Within this framework, it is essential to analyze how legal pluralism also manifests in its third stage in the region, particularly in connection with transnational contexts.

Global Legal Pluralism and Entangled Legalities

In its global dimension, legal pluralism has focused on analyzing the complexity of interactions among legal systems, particularly in transnational or supranational contexts. This highlights the dynamic ways in which different legal orders interact. In this scenario of normative multiplicity, the notion of entangled legalities developed by Nico Krisch offers a valuable lens. Krisch distances himself from traditional conceptions of law as a single, hierarchical, and coherent system. Instead, he proposes understanding law as a plural web in which norms from diverse origins, such as state, local, indigenous, religious, international, or transnational, interact and are mobilized simultaneously. This plurality, according to the author, is the “common state of legal affairs.”

In other words, this approach means that legal relations are not neatly organized but arise from real-life practices, disputes, compromises, and translations. Different legal systems shape each other and change through these encounters. From this perspective, people and institutions play a key role in driving processes of mutual influence, unequal recognition, and adaptation among different legal orders. These interactions depend on who is involved, the context in which they take place, and the narratives that give them meaning. The important point is that entanglement does not look the same everywhere. In some contexts, interaction among legal systems is intense, while in others it is weak or even blocked. These differences stem from historical developments, institutional paths, and existing power structures. These dynamics are especially visible in the Advisory Opinion OC-32/25 process, where diverse communities brought their own normative systems into dialogue with broader legal frameworks.

Community Submissions and Normative Entanglement

The consultation process of Advisory Opinion OC-32/25 brought together a wide range of actors. Some indigenous communities, in particular, drew on their local norms while also engaging strategically with national, regional, and international legal frameworks.

The submission by the Wiwa and Kankuamo Peoples of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (Colombia) illustrates entanglement by combining their ancestral Law of Origin with constitutional rulings and international instruments such as ILO Convention No. 169 and the American Convention, thereby reinforcing territorial and climate claims. By contrast, in Honduras, where indigenous systems lack recognition, Lenca and Tolupán communities, together with COPINH, MADJ, and Women’s Link Worldwide, relied primarily on international human rights and environmental norms to legitimize their demands under the American Convention. A different approach appeared in the case of Mujeres Unidas en Defensa del Agua: Lago Titicaca (Peru–Bolivia), where communities mobilized the Bolivian Constitution and Law No. 71 on the Rights of Mother Earth, showing how recognition at the domestic level can ground claims mainly in national frameworks.

Taken together, these examples show how entanglement varies from complex webs linking local, national, and international frameworks, to strategies grounded primarily in domestic or international law depending on state recognition and political conditions.

The Court’s Reasoning and Entangled Legalities

Tracing the Court’s reasoning reveals the strengths and limitations of normative interaction at the regional level. To interpret the American Convention and the Protocol of San Salvador in the face of the climate emergency, the IACtHR drew on various sources of international law. Entanglement is evident in the use of norms that guide the IACtHR’s interpretation, such as Article 29 of the American Convention, the Vienna Convention’s interpretive rules, and the “constitutional trinity” of democracy, rule of law, and human rights, as well as in straddling practices that employ principles traversing multiple legal orders without being anchored in any one of them. A key example is the pro persona principle, which allows for the selection of the most protective norms across frameworks, a function especially relevant in the climate context.

The Court also reinterpreted human rights obligations, especially the duty of guarantee, in light of environmental law. Principles such as precaution, pro persona, and due diligence acted as bridges across regimes. Due diligence was redefined through dialogue with humanitarian law, the law of the sea, and environmental law, requiring “reinforced” diligence in the face of climate risks. Cooperation obligations were linked to principles of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities. One of the Opinion’s most innovative developments was recognizing nature as a subject of rights, a reference that, despite only briefly noting national precedents, suggests the influence of domestic experiences at the regional level. The Court also affirmed the obligation not to cause irreversible harm as a jus cogens norm, grounding its authority in effectiveness and general principles of law. Overall, while the Court addressed many community demands, including recognition of indigenous knowledge and the vulnerability of affected groups, its entanglement rests primarily on a transversal articulation of international legal regimes, with limited reference to other frameworks.

Conclusions

The IACtHR’s entanglement rests mainly on international frameworks, articulated through interpretive norms and principles that bridge systems, and thus occurs primarily within the international sphere. References to national frameworks in recognizing nature as a subject of rights reflect a form of bottom-up communication, though the Court did not further develop this. While the importance of local perspectives in addressing the climate emergency is widely acknowledged, convergence at regional and international levels remains hardly bottom-up, sustaining a hierarchical logic of law that hinders communication between the local and the global. Still, in states that have recognized pluralism, such as Colombia and Bolivia, communities have mobilized local norms more effectively in international arenas, reflecting greater capacity for normative mobilization where some degree of legal plurality has been accepted.

Anny Matamoros Pineda is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Law, Lund University. Her PhD project aims to address the dearth of pluralism and social legitimacy in global constitutionalism. In particular, she seeks to explore whether applying constitutional principles within the international legal sphere can offer a more unified and coherent manner in addressing global emergencies. Through this approach, her research intends to enhance the effectivess and coherence of global responses to international issues, thereby contributing to the advancement of global governance and the protection of human rights.

19 September 2025

Human Rights Profile Area

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Human Rights Lunch Online: External collaboration and course development in sexual and reproductive health and rights

Photo of a workshop on sexual and reproductive health and rights with people sitting in the background of the photo. Photo.

By Jack Palmieri and Tobias Herder, Faculty of Medicine

How can education in sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) be strengthened through collaboration across institutions and disciplines?

In the Human Rights Lunch Online seminar on September 19th 2025, Jack Palmieri and Tobias Herder, both from the Division of Social Medicine and Global Health at the Faculty of Medicine, will share their experiences of developing and teaching courses in global health and SRHR. Their work spans over the Master of Public Health (MPH) programme, commissioned education, and free-standing collaborative courses, all of which highlight the importance of balancing external engagement for high-quality and relevant learning. The seminar will be moderated by Benedict Oppong Asamoah, associate professor in global health.

Drawing on several recent course development initiatives, Palmieri and Herder will illustrate how external collaboration can broaden perspectives, strengthen student learning, and connect academic training with real-world practice. At the same time, the seminar will address some of the institutional and structural challenges that accompany such collaborative approaches. Issues of transparency, role distribution, flexibility, and quality assurance are central when courses are designed together with external actors. The reliance on guest lecturers and external expertise also raises questions of sustainability and integration within curricula.

Collaboration is not only a practical tool for enhancing learning, but also a way of ensuring that education reflects diverse voices and experiences and prepares students to engage critically with global health challenges.

This Human Rights Lunch seminar will therefore be of particular interest to those working with education and training in global health and SRHR, but also more broadly to anyone concerned with curriculum development, pedagogical innovation, or higher education policy. It will provide both concrete experiences and critical reflections on how external collaboration can help shape courses that are academically rigorous, socially relevant, and firmly grounded in human rights values.

11 September 2025

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Objects of Justice: Exploring the Human Dimension at Lund’s Museum of International Law

Valenting Jeutner holding an object ot the museum. Photo. — Video of Valentin Jeutner showing three artefacts from the Museum of International Law: a deck of cards, a stamp and a large piece of the Berlin Wall.

Watch the video on Youtube: https://youtu.be/F2lgBdrU6Oo (new tab)

By Drishti Alagh, Master of Law Candidate at Lund University and museum team member

Objects have been at the heart of human civilisations since time immemorial. From the bronze sculptures carved during the Indus Valley Civilisation to the artworks sketched (often in secrecy) by prisoners held captive in Nazi Germany’s concentration camps, objects perform a rather unique retroactive function of teleporting one back in time and invoking within oneself a spectrum of perplexities, emotions and ponderances. (International) law, in its constant pursuit of objectivity, rationality and structure, often seems to be disconnected from the everyday lives of people and their lived experiences. It tends to leave behind the humanistic dimensions of law usually by silencing the emotional and sentimental realities of those it affects. The Museum of International Law, however, explicitly challenges these perceptions and attempts to approach and understand the black letter law through the lens of objects. Undertaking this exercise through objects and material culture not only assists in extracting out the emotional underpinnings underlying international treaties or the painful realities hiding behind colonial ventures, but also overarchingly helps develop international law as a rather vivid context-based discipline, swerving organically through time and space.

Stemming from these notions, therefore, the Museum of International Law (MOIL) is a first of its kind initiative that engages with objects, in a way accentuating the relation between objects and individuals, in order to unravel the human dimension of international law. The evocative collection of objects exhibited in the Museum, from a piece of the Berlin Wall to the vivacious Lotus Collection, could be seen as the physical manifestation of the abstract international legal framework, illustrating the stories of individuals whose lives have been entwined with pivotal events that not only shaped the development of international law but also influenced the broader course of history.

Our aim is to bring law to life by exhibiting objects and sharing stories that reverberate the shifting dynamics between international law and the lives of ordinary human beings all across the globe, thereby bringing a humanistic as well as a human rights dimension, spanning across theory and practice, to the discipline of international law. Rather than displaying or depicting international law as a mere myriad of treaties signed and regulations adopted in distant institutions, MOIL is an intellectual space wholeheartedly devoted to exhibiting international law by way of its ubiquitous presence in the everyday lives, struggles and resistances of individuals and communities all around the world. With an unambiguous yet compelling aim of the humanisation of international law, the Museum displays objects that in essence, embody the lived effects of international law-making processes on the lives, emotions and experiences of people. From the UN blue helmet worn by a soldier to an ashtray used by someone aboard the French steamer S.S. Lotus, the museum’s collection not just encapsulates mere objects but also offers evidence of the profound and personal stakes of international law that are felt at the grassroot levels of societies. The museum is not a static archive of objects but a dynamic living space that spans across reflection and action.

Alongside exhibiting objects showcasing the tangible impacts of international law, the museum serves as a space for critical engagement with objects and a platform for voicing the often-marginalised experiences in formal legal discourses. Therefore, with the primary aim to bridge the gap between the theoretical and practical notions of international law, the museum hosts regular events such as discussions on current affairs, seminars and workshops by survivors, scholars, activists, legal practitioners, visiting researchers and artists to speak about the law from the ground up. These initiatives aim to inspire reflections on the promises and limitations of the international legal frameworks by creating dialogue between legal professionals, artists, historians, and communities affected by international law as well as students and learners of law. Very recently, for instance, the museum hosted a conversation with two Lund residents who experienced the end of the second world war as children in Germany, thereby giving all the attendees the opportunity to reflect upon the actual lived experiences of the two children amidst a significant and imperative historical event that shaped the course of contemporary international law.

Furthermore, instead of establishing itself solely as a static and archival exhibit of objects, MOIL aims to constantly and consistently deal with the fundamental questions surrounding international law and navigating through ways to reshape the law. The museum, in this sense, grows, develops and nurtures everyday as an ongoing process, as does the international legal discipline. Moreover, by centring the stories of individuals behind international legal events and their lived experiences and realities evoked through these events, the museum helps reveal the profound moral and emotional dimensions of international law, that are evident in its capacity to heal, its potential for harm, and its indispensable role in the pursuit of dignity, accountability, and justice. The museum is in itself an organic entity where law meets life by way of the stories, emotions and most importantly, objects of those touched by international law, reminding us that behind every treaty signed by states or every legal principle adopted through a judicial decision is a person, a struggle, and a story worth telling, for law is inextricably etched in its own humanness.

Visiting the Museum of International Law

The Museum of International Law has already had a soft launch in the premises of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute in Lund. However, the plan is to open the museum in a more accessible and appropriate location at the Faculty of Law in the near future. For now, the museum is only open by appointment. To book, email: contact@internationallawmuseum.org.

Museum website: https://internationallawmuseum.org/ (new tab)

Visit the museum´s digital Lotus exhibition: https://artspaces.kunstmatrix.com/en/exhibition/14304052/lotus-collection (new tab)

4 June 2025

Human Rights Profile Area

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Human Rights Dialogue – Forming new research agendas for human rights in Sweden

Researchers and practitioners from different fields engaged in group discussions (Photo: Johan Persson).

By Lena Halldenius, Professor of Human Rights and Coordinator of the Human Rights Profile Area

On the 29 April 2025, the Human Rights Profile Area and the Swedish Institute for Human Rights organised a Human Rights Dialogue. Around 50 people from Lund University, the Institute for Human Rights, and the Raoul Wallenberg Institute met to discuss, reflect, and start forming new research agendas for pertinent human rights challenges in Sweden today and in the near future.

The Dialogue opened with a presentation of the newly launched Annual Report from the Institute for Human Rights, on how human rights are respected and realised – or not – in Sweden (https://mrinstitutet.se/rapporter/arsrapport-2025-om-manskliga-rattigheter/). The Report found that general support for human rights remains very strong in Sweden, with survey results suggesting that 82% believe that human rights are important to them and reflect their values. A reflection that persisted throughout our discussions was that it would be interesting and important to know more about what is behind those figures. What is the perception of human rights that inform these numbers? A potential research project is beginning to form itself already!

*Photo*: *Abigail Booth presenting the 2025 Annual Report from the Institute for Human Rights to the participants of the Human Rights Dialogue (Photo: Johan Persson)*.

Discussions continued in small groups around different themes: 1. Discrimination, racism, hate, and threats, 2. Economic,social, and cultural rights, 3. Rule of law and shrinking civil space, 4. Climate and environment, and 5. Methodological challenges for measuring human rights.

*Photo: Researchers and practitioners from different academic fields engaged in group discussions (Photo: Johan Persson)*.

Among the maaaany topics covered, we talked about how big societal transitions (like digitisation and the green transition) bring new challenges that the human rights framework has not been designed for. Do we need to rethink human rights when things we have taken for granted are in flux? In the wake of a weakening democracy and a harsher social climate, we were also alert to a new kind of talk about the alleged “social contract”, where rights are surreptitiously conditioned on duties to behave and blend in. We begin to see how human rights are used to justify – in the name of security – interventions that just recently were seen as obvious violations, like mass surveillance and frisking children without any suspicion of criminal activity. What is the relationship between the individual and the state today, and what is the role for civil society and activism, when democracy is put to the test in an increasingly authoritarian political culture?

Human rights are supposed to be instantiated in law and institutions, but they are also aspirational and normative ideals to strive towards. This is a delicate balance. Is there a risk that aspirations and ideals come at the risk of making formal protective institutions irrelevant? At the same time, rights are also affective and an aspirational framework could help foster a more resilient political culture of rights. We are currently witnessing persistent inequality between countries and growing inequality within countries. Whether economic inequalities in themselves can constitute rights violations is a hotly debated topics. But one thing that seems clear is that vast economic inequalities and wealth concentration in the hands of a few have seriously detrimental effects on democratic institutions and civic participation.

Sweden is often portrayed as a champion of economic and social rights. An international comparison would be valuable to assess whether this perception holds true. But how can large scale studies of the progressive realization of economic and social rights be done? What are the indicators and the relevant data? Dealing with such methodological challenges will be a crucial part of human rights research ahead. We are just getting started!

Photo: The Human Rights Dialogue offered ample opportunities to connect with other Profile Area members. The Human Rights Profile Area has increased substantially during the last year and now has more than 130 members from 6 faculties at Lund University *(Photo: Johan Persson).*

19 May 2025

Human Rights Profile Area

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Human Rights Lunch Online: The Right to a Fair Trial – Historical Foundations

Martin Sunnqvist, coordinator for the Advanced Study Group ”Oaths and Courts – from Forum to the Future” at Pufendorf Institute presented during the Human Rights Lunch Online on May 16th, 2025.

Watch the recording on Youtube:

By Martin Sunnqvist

Within the ASG ”Oaths and Courts – from Forum to the Future” at the Lund University Pufendorf Institute for Advanced Studies, a group of researchers working within law, history, legal history, ancient history, theology and languages (Latin and Greek) gather. The independence and impartiality of judges, and the ambition to find the truth through judicial proceedings, have been defined by different types of oaths from Antiquity and onwards. In the ASG, we discuss how we can understand these legal oaths today, what they mean and what role they play in finding the truth and for the independence and impartiality of judges. And what do the standards of independence and impartiality mean when AI becomes part of decision-making?

The right to a fair trial is a fundamental human right. It is not only a right on its own, but it also provides individuals with an avenue to enforce other human rights. The right to a fair trial is, for example, described in art. 6 ECHR as the right to a ‘fair and public hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial tribunal established by law.’ Art. 10 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides everyone with the right ‘to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal’. The right to a fair trial is also defined in many constitutions. The right has been further defined in many judgments from the European Court of Human Rights.

In ancient Greece, oaths of judges are known from the 4th century B.C. Judges then swore to vote in accordance with the laws and decrees of the Athenian people, to listen to both parties equally, and to judge with their most just judgment without favour or hostility. These are standards that we still recognise as part of the right to a fair trial. In the period from 1150 to 1250, when judges and lawyers were in a process of professionalisation, oaths were an important part of the transition. In the 1230s, oaths for lawyers were formulated in France, England and Sicily. Lawyers should swear that they should not present unjust cases and that they should be loyal to their clients. This was a development of the Roman calumny oath. Furthermore, oaths for judges were formulated in the same decade in the German empire and in Sicily. Judges should swear that they should not hand down wrongful judgments, neither because of love nor hate, prayer nor reward, fear nor favour. These phrases then spread all over Europe and traces can be seen in the historical development of oaths of judges in many jurisdictions, often still today.

During the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period, the correct behaviour of a judge was not only communicated through oaths but also with the help of images. In town halls, such as in Siena in Italy, in Monsaraz in Portugal, and in Gdansk in Poland, there are allegories from the 14^th -16^th centuries of good and bad government or the good and bad judge. Also in legal manuscripts, the good judge and the fair trial could be shown and contrasted to the deceitful judge. In this way, the desired behaviour was clarified.

Emperor Justinian surrounded by six virtues. — *Maître de 1346, Le tribunal de Justinien, Digestum vetus cum glossa Accursii, vers 1345. Copyright BnF, Manuscript Latin no. 14339.*

One example from a manuscript is from the mid-14^th century. Maria Alessandra Bilotta (Lisbon), art historian specialised in medieval legal manuscripts, explained during a seminar 7^th March 2025 how emperor Justinian as a judge is surrounded by six virtues, three on either side, representing caritas – charity (looking upwards and holding parchment scrolls, one upwards with the three first commandments and one downwards with the other seven commandments), temperantia – temperance (holding a locked castle where vices are kept), fortitude – strength (holding a lion in its jaws), prudentia – wisdom (holding a circle or mirror with a book, and symbols of day and night), fides – faith (holding a tree in which are hanging 15 medallions representing the declaration of confession) and spes – hope (holding an anchor). Justinian himself symbolises the virtue of justice. Below are people with gifts, and as the judge refuses bribery, justice is incorruptible. A soldier is cutting the head of someone as an exemplum for the people, also reminding us about the development in human rights as the prohibition of capital punishment was, for example, not even included in the original version of the European Convention of Human Rights but added later.

The seminar 7^th March 2025 was financed through seed money from the Human Rights profile area and the theme was The Right to a Fair Trial – Historical Foundations. Besides Maria Alessandra Bilotta’s contribution, Camilla Marangoni (Rome/Torino) presented her research on images from illuminated legal manuscripts, using the ICONCLASS taxonomy of iconography. A recurring motif in medieval manuscripts is that persons have taken off a glove and are holding it in the other hand. The detail is present in marriage scenes but also other contexts. What symbolic rule does such a detail have there? In some cases, it might symbolise oath taking.

As regards oaths, Vojtech Vladár (Bratislava) presented the development of oaths in the medieval romano-canonical procedure and related it to the ordeals, i.e. tests of guilt or innocence through interference by God. Also in oaths, God was invoked as a guarantor for truth-telling. Janko Paunovic (Vienna) presented various 12^th-14^th century oaths from Kotor in today’s Montenegro, showing that judges there had to swear not to help their friends or harm their enemies and that they should judge in good faith and without deceit. This aligns well with oaths in other jurisdictions and contributes to the understanding of the diffusion of ethical standards for judges in the Middle Ages. Raffaella Bianchi Riva (Milan) discussed the oaths of advocates in the Middle Ages, and how they handled the dual role of the legal profession: advocates want to win the case and have a duty of loyalty to their clients, but on the other hand, they may not promote injustice. Oath of advocates can also have a political function: as means of control which can hamper their independence.

Jørn Øyrehagen Sunde (Oslo) presented the four daughters of God referred to in Norwegian Medieval law as a means to solve the problem of corruption during the transmission from a kindred to a state society in Norway in the 13^th century. The four daughters of God were the four virtues mercy, verity, justice and peace, and against them stood the four bastards of the Devil, which were the vices fear, avarice, enmity and friendship. This illustrates – just as the oaths and the imagery in town halls and manuscripts – the ethical standard of judges.

Altogether, the seminar provided us with deepened knowledge about different aspects of the history of the right to a fair trial. It reinforced our view that the ethical standards of judges and advocates have long histories but are complex and difficult to apply, and therefore they are adapted and renegotiated as societies change. The core values, however, as the independence and impartiality in the judge’s mind, remains intact as an ideal over the centuries. This means that history is not only interesting in its own right but also provides us with examples useful here and now.

The seminar also formed a base for continued thinking of ways to develop our common interests centering around oaths and courts. The topic could be widened to analyse how oaths have functioned as means to safeguard good governance, something that could also be connected to historic images. On the other hand, the topic could be widened to comprise times of transitions – what role do oaths to the constitution and other oaths have when a society transitions from one type of regime to another. An ongoing discussion is also how ethical standards for judges and advocates are adapted to the use of AI technology for analysing and presenting evidence and assessing facts and law.

Martin Sunnqvist is a professor of legal history at the Faculty of Law, Lund University and a member of the Human Rights Profile Area. On the 16th of May 2025, Martin will give a presentation on the ASG during Human Rights Lunch Online. You can read more about Martin’s research on the research portal.

9 May 2025

Human Rights Profile Area

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