International Human Rights Law

Learning Outcomes

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• demonstrate skills of self-management including an ability to reflect on the content and quality of your own work;
• make critical judgments about international materials and relevant literature.
• formulate an effectively reasoned and structured argument supported by appropriate references;

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• understand human rights’ potential and limitations in reducing poverty and inequality and promoting decolonization as well as social, global, and environmental justice, and sustainable development.
• have a substantial knowledge of international and regional human rights’ normative framework, institutions, and practices;
• have a good knowledge of the main ideas, trends, dilemmas, and challenges underlying international human rights law as well as be familiar with major directions of human rights’ critique and various strategies of human rights’ justification;

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• apply legal rules and principles studied on the module to factual scenarios.
• be able to articulate and defend your position in contemporary legal debates concerning human rights;
• be able to analyze various sources of international human rights law and relevant academic literature;

The module consists of two major sections. The first section addresses the main elements of international human rights law: normative bases, right-holders, various types of human rights, corresponding territorial and extraterritorial obligations of states and non-state actors, and international and regional mechanisms of human rights protection. The second section explores the role of human rights in solving pressing global problems, including poverty and inequality, decolonization, social, global and environmental injustice, various obstacles to sustainable development, as well as the use of digital technologies as a means for social exclusion and marginalization of individuals and groups.

The module is structured as follows:

1)Do We Need Human Rights? (History, Discourse, and Critique of Human Rights)

2)Normative Foundations of Human Rights Law: Three “Generations” of Human Rights

3)Holders of Human Rights and Bearers of Human Rights Obligations: From State-Centric to Human-Centric Legal Order

4)The United Nations Human Rights System

5)Regional Human Rights Systems: African, Arab, ASEAN, European, and Inter-American Human Rights Law

6)Human Rights and Colonialism. Third World Approaches to Human Rights

7)Human Rights as Instruments of Poverty and Inequality Alleviation

8)Human Rights Agenda and Sustainable Development Agenda

9)Environmental Justice: How Should Human-Centrism and Eco-Centrism Be Balanced?

10)Digitalization and Human Rights

Teaching and learning methods

Teaching methods include:

1)Lectures that provide you with knowledge and information within a structured context. Reading of normative documents, case law, and research literature is required in preparation.

2)Tutorials which presuppose that you complete individual or group tasks and/or prepare answers to a list of questions supplied in advance. They allow you to maximise your performance in the summative assessments.

Learning activities include:

• Directed reading, assisted by lists of required and further reading and (sometimes) availability of materials on Blackboard;
• Access to, and work with, electronic resources in the form of international law instruments, case law, and academic literature;
• Legal analysis of various sources;
• Tackling and solving factual problems of international human rights law;
• Formulating and presenting in oral form (through class participation) and in written form (assessed essay) reasoned and structured arguments;
• Group work;
• Debates;
• Mini-presentations on selected topics;
• Commenting on other students’ presentations;
• Role plays;
• Simulations;
• Formulating questions to module guests - human rights scholars and practitioners;
• Completion of summative assessment.

Resources & Reading list

General Resources

Electronic Resources. The module implies extensive use of electronically available resources – journal articles available via ‘Heinonline’, international treaty texts available from the UN’s website, cases from legal databases/institutions’ websites.

Blackboard. All reading lists/ lecture hand-outs etc. are made available via Blackboard.

Textbooks

Olivier De Schutter (2019). International Human Rights Law: Cases, Materials, Commentary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Philip Alston, Ryan Goodman (2013). International Human Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Louis Henkin, et al. (2009). Human Rights. New York, NY: Thomson Reuters/Foundation Press.

Ilas Bantekas, Lutz Oette (2020). International Human Rights Law and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Formative

This is how we’ll give you feedback as you are learning. It is not a formal test or exam.

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat

An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.