© Università degli Studi di Padova - Credits: HCE Web agency
Carlos Arturo Gutierrez Rodriguez
Transitional Justice in the International Legal Order: The Special Jurisdiction for Peace in Colombia as a paradigm case
Armed conflicts are the breeding ground for massive human rights violations. Peacebuilding continues to be a huge challenge and a matter of global interest. This is why the International community had a crucial role in the peace conversations developed in La Habana between the Colombian Government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC-EP, Spanish acronym). Thanks to the support of many States —with a special participation of Norway, the European Union, Cuba and Chile—, a Peace Agreement (that aimed to end the longest armed conflict of the Americas) was accomplished with the endorsement of the International Criminal Court’s Prosecutor.
The laying down of weapons by the oldest active guerrilla in the world demanded the creation of a Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP, Spanish acronym), a tribunal based on the principles of transitional justice to exceptionally judge the Human Rights violations committed during the armed conflict. In a new context of multilevel governance and an unprecedented solid structure of international law, this tribunal has been the first developed entirely under the preliminary examination of the International Criminal Court.
So far, this is the first peace process with a running transitional justice system that must tackle both the complex national political tensions and a consolidated international legal system with codified obligations for States. This means that the Peace Agreement of La Habana needed to resolve political tensions and satisfy: the internal legislation, the guerrilla (both the bases and the leadership), the victims’ rights and the International Commitments in terms of Human Rights and Individual Criminal Responsibility.
Due to its historical conditions —and as the case outlines tensions between national peace, global justice and human rights— this research approaches the Colombian peace process of La Habana as a paradigm case (open to comparative studies); with a particular emphasis on the system of transitional justice built to respond to the pressures at stake that continues to have great challenges to face in its implementation phase.
Carlotta Rossato
Enforcing individuals’ fundamental rights: universal jurisdiction and alternative means
The uncertainty surrounding the reach of the right to reparation of victims of international crimes under international law implies that there is not a sure and defined venue to make such right effective. This project aims at assessing the suitability of exercising universal civil jurisdiction to fill this gap. It intends to investigate the use of such a principle as a tool to enforce the right to reparation of victims of fundamental rights violations and the existence of alternative means to ensure their rights.
Although the principle of universal jurisdiction was born in the area of criminal law, recently it has been applied to the civil law dimension as well. To wit, the possibility to award damages to victims of unlawful acts that do not have any nexus with the adjudicating court.
This research assumes a victim-oriented perspective, meaning the protection and enforcement of individuals’ fundamental rights, including the right to a remedy, but also the duty to prevent violations of those rights, to investigate them, and to guarantee effective access to justice (broadly intended).
This approach leads to considering practical limits of universal civil jurisdiction, such as its non-mandatory nature, State immunity norms, and enforcement issues. Therefore, on one hand, the practice of universal civil jurisdiction will be taken into consideration. This can address individual responsibility of natural persons, State responsibility, as well as corporate responsibility. In light of the limits revealed by the study of the practice, the research will identify alternative paths to be followed by victims in order to achieve justice. For instance, the norm of forum necessitatis, or forum non conveniens in common law systems; the exercise of action civiles within criminal proceedings based on universality; in the field of corporate responsibility, the technique of the “anchor defendant”; State’s responsibility to guarantee the respect of human rights of people under its protection (State sovereignty) and State’s due diligence obligations to take the necessary and reasonable measures to prevent the violation of human rights in situations at risk.
Katarina Velkov
The Principle of Non-refoulement and Environmental Challenges to Security and Human Protection: Legal Feasibility of the “Well-Founded Fear” Under Refugee Law and Human Rights Law
This study considers how international human rights law defines requirements for mainstreaming human rights safeguards to protect climate refugees. It aims to further explore the relationship between the principle of non-refoulement and accommodation of climate refugees. It examines the proportionality of the “well-founded fear” in front of the supranational courts as a framework through which human rights standards may be systemically integrated into extant and emerging international legal procedures on migration induced by climate change.
The overarching research question is - How can thicker accountability for human rights violations be achieved to ensure the protection of migrants and asylum seekers facing threats to life by environmental disasters? The thesis inquires - what are the prospects, paradoxes, and frameworks for mainstreaming human rights principles into the international climate change agenda? As the preliminary findings of this study show, many national governments have either abandoned efforts to deter human rights abuses or have in extreme cases aided such violations.
This thesis, therefore, takes an international view in its attempt to contribute to the emerging literature on how to mainstream human rights principles into legal instruments designed to combat globally emerging environmental threats to human security. As a result, the primary goal in this research will not be to contribute to debates on the direct impacts of climate change on human rights and its international protection, but rather to examine to which extent the problematics of demonstrating the well-founded fear of return to the origin country conditions the invocation of the non-refoulement principle and thus jeopardizes the enjoyment of basic human rights.
The research will focus on the evolution of the non-refoulement norm and its (different) interpretation and application by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), and further domestic courts. The driving argument is that this principle is still applied differently and too restrictively by different actors at different levels. The work, thus, aims to demonstrate that in international law, protection is not a fixed concept and that its implementation is inextricably related to the dominant legal definition of who is a refugee.
Given the legal and practical nature of this project, it will apply the combination of research methodologies, i.e., historical, doctrinal, analytical, and interdisciplinary.
Franca Viganò
Health as a Right: The Italian Approach to Health and Homelessness. A Qualitative Perspective During and After the Covid-19 Outbreak
This research project aims to observe and investigate how the concept of health as a right is recognized and developed in Italy, focusing on vulnerable groups during and after the Covid-19 outbreak. In doing so, it is crucial to analyze the reactions of Italian homeless and vulnerable groups (cultural, political, social) to the spread of the virus, the impact of this phenomenon on the National Healthcare System, and the reaction of the public opinion. Recent publications and public discussions underline how it is important to reflect on homelessness and access to sanitary services and institutions in Italy, especially with the rapid and drastic changes brought by the pandemic. Moreover, the main questions concern how the National Healthcare System takes care of homeless people during and after the emergency, and what are the prospects for future policies at a human rights level?
With these questions the research focuses not only on the activities of the public healthcare system, but also on how they are received and applied to vulnerable groups, as well as the repercussion on associations and the public, all elements that are strictly related.
In Italy, homelessness has been documented in different ways and through different approaches and measures. This study considers, among others, the phenomenon of the newly identified profiles of the homeless that go over the stereotype of ‘clochards’. These groups include people that recently fell into the social assistance system or that do not live in poverty and decay situation as the stereotype suggests, being, for the majority of the cases, the products of the deep social crisis that emerged along (if not strengthened) with the health emergency.
This is where qualitative methods and field work become the main instruments for this research, enabling the study to investigate within contexts of groups that are defined as ‘hard to reach’ or ‘invisible’. Therefore, the center of the activities will be related to engaging in interviews with the homeless, public healthcare system workers and volunteers, as well as with professionals of non-profit organizations and NGOs.
In this case, the key to understand the reception of the different policies implemented (socio-economic and health-related) is also to conduct anthropological observations of the daily tasks related to the subjects of the study, trying to understand and illustrate the different perspectives in action.
3/11/2021
University of Padova
Human Rights Centre
"Antonio Papisca"
Complesso Universitario
Via Beato Pellegrino, 28
35137 Padova
Tel 049 827 1813 / 1817
E-mail
centro.dirittiumani@unipd.it
Certified e-mail (PEC)
centro.dirittiumani@pec.unipd.it
University of Padova
Human Rights Centre
"Antonio Papisca"
Complesso Universitario
Via Beato Pellegrino, 28
35137 Padova
Tel 049 827 1813 / 1817
E-mail
centro.dirittiumani@unipd.it
Certified e-mail (PEC)
centro.dirittiumani@pec.unipd.it
© Università degli Studi di Padova - Credits: HCE Web agency