The research approach of the Human Rights Centre
The research activity of the Human Rights Centre has, from the very beginning, pursued the objective of contributing to the deepening and dissemination of the culture of human rights, starting from the assumption that ‘human rights knowledge’ is an axio-practical and irenic knowledge, constitutively inter- and trans-disciplinary and action-oriented, which aims to build peace, as a work of justice, not only among people, groups and peoples, but also among particular ‘knowledge’. The paradigmatic core of reference is that provided by current International Human Rights Law, which is rooted in the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The research carried out by the Centre aims to elucidate the nature and scope of this genuinely human-centred Ius Novum Universale, to dissect its multiple potentialities, and to identify relapses and application paths in the various fields of human action. Particular attention is paid to the forms and methods aimed at embodying the human rights paradigm in educational, institutional and political contexts, with particular regard to women's rights and the condition of vulnerable groups, and in the space that is proper to human rights: the space-world, as a glocal space, ‘from the City to the UN’, without interruption.
In this vision of ‘acted, not imposed legality’ for the respect of the dignity of all members of the human family and of the equal rights and duties inherent to them, the principles to which the Centre's research constantly refers are those of the centrality of the human person in politics and in any other system or process, of the universality of fundamental rights - civil, political, economic, social, cultural - of their interdependence and indivisibility of the inseparability of women's and girls' human rights from internationally recognised human rights, of social and economic justice, of the rule of law, of the welfare state, of representative and participatory democracy, of subsidiarity, of the proscription of war, of the prohibition of the use of force to settle international disputes, of the obligation to settle them peacefully, of the universality of criminal justice, of “good governance”.
Among the techniques of analysis used is also General Systems Theory, which allows, among other things, to grasp the holistic dimension of International Human Rights Law. The function of this is to carry over into the various systems of action (from politics to economics), with the authority proper to the ius positum, the values of universal ethics that it has transposed, feeding a path of human-centred recapitulation of educational, political and economic processes, which has its apex in the value of the person - ‘subsistent human right’ (A. Rosmini).
The Centre's strategic choice is to focus the results of its research primarily on their use for educational and training programmes, not only (obviously) in the university system, but also within vital worlds such as schools of all levels, the network of civil society organisations, and local government bodies. To this end, the centre is constantly developing and updating teaching plans and educational modules. Since 2009, it has been collaborating with the Ministry of Education, Universities and Research (MIUR) Commission for the experimentation of ‘Citizenship and Constitution’, in particular for the training of teachers on the subject.
In its work in this direction, the Centre declines, with intentions of systematic and organic programming, the substantive contents indicated in Article 26 of the Universal Declaration, which states:
Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
In the university world, the Padova Centre, with a pioneering role, has contributed to achieving original and markedly innovative results in the field of educational programming. Of particular note is the activity aimed at creating new degree courses - three-year and two-year - respectively in ‘Political Science, International Relations, Human Rights’ and in ‘Human Rights and Multi-level Governance’. The courses activated at the University of Padova register the highest number of enrolments compared to the others offered by the Department of Political Science, Law and International Studies. Already in 1988, the Centre had promoted the creation in the University of Padova of the three-year School of Specialisation in ‘Institutions and Techniques for the Protection of Human Rights’, the first of its kind in the world. Worthy of mention, due to its high prominence in the European and international arena, is the design and management (with constant curricular updating) of the ‘European Master in Human Rights and Democratisation’, established in 1997 and based in Venice.
In its work of ‘sense-making’ with strong axiological connotations and a marked international dimension in the field of education and training, the Centre has been concerned to nurture exchange and collaboration with the vital circles involved, especially with teachers, local administrators, and those in charge of associations and voluntary work.
In addition to the characteristics of interdisciplinarity and action orientation according to the classic Unesco approach, the substantive part of the Centre's research is characterised by its accentuated glocalistic dimension, rectius ‘glocalistic’, on the basis of the twofold assumption that the territorial and functional space of human rights goes beyond that of national borders and that the principle of subsidiarity can fruitfully operate in this field by privileging, for the territorial dimension, the terminal poles of local governance and supranational governance, and for the functional dimension, the operativity of non-governmental organisations and transnational social movements. In this regard, significant legitimacy comes from the United Nations Declaration on the Right and Responsibility of Individuals, Groups and Organs of Society to Promote and Protect Universally Recognised Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and the related EU Council Guidelines on Human Rights Defenders.
The focus on the new International Law is constant and concerns the sources, procedures, specialised institutions of both the universal human rights system and regional systems. The Centre's distinctive note lies above all in its commitment to elucidating, on the one hand, the distinctive properties of international human rights law with respect to the old state-centred law and international humanitarian law itself, and, on the other, the human-centred and democratic fertilisation work that the new law is doing with respect to national legal systems.
In this context, the constantly updated research on the topic of international criminal justice anchored in the human rights paradigm and its impact on the legal and political frameworks of the international community, with particular reference to the role of non-governmental actors, is worthy of note.
In the groove of inter- and trans-disciplinarity, legal analysis is systematically accompanied by political and sociological analysis, with a focus on the human rights of women and members of vulnerable groups. Starting from the observation that International Human Rights Law has in particular been appropriated by civil society solidarist organisations, which spend it ‘on the ground’ as a resource of power and a source of legitimation of more advanced avenues of democracy (representative and participatory) from the city up to the highest instances of intergovernmental and supranational governance, the Centre's research is committed to elucidating the link between the democratisation of the United Nations and other international organisations and the enhancement of their functions. In this strand of analysis - international, transnational and comopolitical democracy - lies the reflection conducted since the 1980s on the reform of the United Nations, on the role of NGOs with ‘consultative status’, and on the impact of the human rights paradigm on the democratic qualification of the European Union.
An original research path is the one that has as its object institutional ombudsperson defence: here too the strategic finality of educating and training competent personnel for the exercise of extra-jurisdictional guarantee functions of human rights is evident. The Centre's commitment in this area is to consolidate and develop the culture of ombudsman defence in its own logical and institutional terrain: that of human rights and belonging to the context of ‘national human rights institutions’.
Scientific work with a high institutional and political profile was conducted in 1986-1987 on behalf of UNICEF-Italy with reference to the drafting of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, which was then in progress at the United Nations in Geneva. The Padova Centre set up a Scientific Committee composed of professors of the calibre of Ernesto Caffo, Fausto Pocar, Silvio Ceccato, Aldo Visalberghi, Dario Velo, Adriana Beghé Loreti and Giampaolo Guaraldi, among others. The document drafted by this Committee, with a view to organicity and in fertile collaboration with the secretariat of the relevant Geneva Working Group, was submitted to the President of UNICEF and forwarded by him to the then Minister of Foreign Affairs for follow-up.
Attention to the sensitive issue of peoples' rights is also constant, with particular regard to the rights to self-determination, development and peace. In this area, it is worth mentioning the participation in the 1980s in international conferences organised by Unesco, in San Marino and Paris respectively, on the subject of peoples' rights and the rights of solidarity. Also in Paris, the Centre's management participated in 1989 in the meeting of the special Group of Experts, which ended with the adoption of a substantial report on the subject. As a result of the above, Unesco transferred to the Centre all the official documentation produced at conferences organised on various continents, so that it could be duly published. By special agreement with Unesco, the Centre published the volume edited by G.B. Kutudjian and A. Papisca, ‘Droits des peuples. Rights of Peoples’ (Cedam, 1991).
Also worth mentioning is the contribution that the Centre's research staff has made, with the UNESCO Chair on ‘Human Rights, Democracy and Peace’ embedded in the Centre, to the multidisciplinary reflection conducted by the network of similar UNESCO Chairs active in the various regions of the world.
With regard to local authorities in particular, in the years 1987-1988, the Centre collaborated in drafting the text of the first Regional Law for the promotion of a culture of peace (R.L. 30 March 1988, no. 18). Since the launch in 1991 of the proposal to include the ‘human rights peace norm’ in the new Statutes of Municipalities and Provinces, the Centre has developed a line of research based on a fact, which is absolutely innovative for the Italian legal system: the reference to International Human Rights Law, as well as to the Italian Constitution, directly implemented by local authorities, with the consequent creation of specialised structures (Departments, Councils, Departments, Offices) on human rights, peace education, development cooperation, and interculturalism.
The Centre's scientific production is conveyed, above all to the vital worlds repeatedly evoked, through the publication of Volumes in the series ‘Studies and Research on Human Rights’ (Cedam), Quaderni, Tascabili, the Journal ‘Peace, Human Rights, Peoples’ Rights', published from 1987 to 1989 at Liviana Editrice and from 1990 to 1995 at Cedam, and its continuation from 2004 to 2013 in the new series ‘Pace diritti umani/Peace human rights’ with Marsilio Editori, the printed Bulletin ‘Archivio pace diritti umani/peace human rights’, sent to over three thousand addresses, and the Database ‘Archivio pace diritti umani/peace human rights’. Within the latter, two large codices can be consulted: Collection of international human rights instruments and Collection of instruments of international humanitarian, criminal and refugee law, published by P. De Stefani respectively in Quaderni no. 7/2004 and no. 14/2007 of the Interdepartmental Centre on the Rights of the Person and Peoples of the University of Padova (Cleup).
It is also worth mentioning the production of CDs, starting with those entitled ‘abcdiritti umani’ and ‘adotta un diritto umano’ (adopt a human right) respectively, produced with the collaboration of teachers and students.
With regard to the European Union in particular, the centre's management has been an active participant, since 1990, in introducing the theme of human rights, peace and the role of civil society formations within the Community programme called ‘Action Jean Monnet’ in order to qualify the European Union as a civil actor, endowed with soft power to be used for the construction of a world order of peace based on the United Nations Charter. In recognition of its research and educational activities, the Centre is mentioned in one of the twenty ‘Success Stories’ reported in a multilingual publication in 2007 by the European Commission as part of the activities of the aforementioned Jean Monnet Programme.
The most recent research has taken on a markedly transnational dimension, also due to the number and representativeness of the people and structures involved. First of all, the European research project on ‘The role of intercultural dialogue for the development of a new (plural, democratic) citizenship’, co-funded by the European Union and the Veneto Region, is worth mentioning. The research, which began and ended with international conferences at the University of Padova in March 2006 and March 2007 respectively, was conducted with the collaboration of professors and experts from several European universities and other continents, coordinated by the Centre of Padova. The result of the research is the volume edited by L. Bekemans, M. Karasinska-Fendler, M. Mascia, A. Papisca, C. A. Stephanou, P. G. Xuereb, Intercultural Dialogue and Citizenship. Translating Values into Action. A Common Project for Europeans and Their Partners, Venice, Marsilio, 2007 (pp.665). The book aims to contribute to elucidating ideas and projects within the framework of the European Year for Intercultural Dialogue, called by the EU institutions for 2008. In agreement with the European Commission, partial versions of this volume have been published in Italian (edited by M. Mascia) and Polish (edited by M. Karasinska-Fendler).
Another European project (Daphne), also co-funded by the European Union and the Veneto Region, was implemented by the Padua Centre with the collaboration of the L. Boltzman Institute on Human Rights in Vienna, the Human Rights Association Human Development and the Foundation against Trafficking in Women in Warsaw, on the topic of trafficking in women and minors. This resulted in the publication, in the form of an ‘Educational Toolkit for Teachers and Students’, of the volume edited by P. Degani, Human Rights and Trafficking in Women and Youg People. An Educational Toolkit for Teachers and Students’, Padova, 2007 (in English, Italian, German and Polish).
Another significant research project on the topic of ‘Towards an integrated perspective between human rights and the human development approach: theoretical-normative foundations, measurement problems and lines of action’ was launched in 2007 on the basis of a collaboration agreement between the Centre of Padova, the University of Pavia and the Jordan University of Amman, with funding provided by the Ministry of Universities within the framework of inter-governmental Mediterranean cooperation of the so-called ‘Catania Process’. The strategic objective is not only to enrich with scientific contributions the theme of intercultural dialogue in the Mediterranean area, but also to foster the development, in the same area, of forms of inter-university collaboration for the development of university courses on human rights.
A research financed by the Department of Rights and Equal Opportunities of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers concerns the issue of institutional ombudsperson defence and, more generally, of human rights institutions in Italy from a comparative perspective with what exists in other European countries. The aim is to produce a faithful ‘mapping’ on the subject, also in the framework of the ongoing collaboration with the Council of Europe and its Commissioner for Human Rights.
Another research is aimed at surveying and evaluating what is being done in the Italian university system in terms of teaching courses on human rights and peace.
In response to a request from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the centre's head office carried out research (2006-2007) on the subject of Civil Peace Corps and produced a preparatory document for the (hoped-for) establishment of such Corps in Italy.
A further line of research conducted concerns the subject of so-called ‘City diplomacy’, in particular the legal-institutional aspects of the international role of local government bodies. The research contributed to the preparation of the contents of the World Conference on City Diplomacy, organised in The Hague in June 2008, at the initiative of the municipality of that city and ‘United Cities and Local Governments’, an association with consultative status at the United Nations.
In addition to the publication of volumes and essays, the Centre's scientific production has also resulted in the dissemination of documents and appeals aimed at emphasising the need to follow the path of the legality of human rights and the peaceful settlement of disputes at particularly delicate junctures in national and international political life, as well as at important conferences and symposia promoted by non-governmental organisations and local and regional government bodies.
Within a rich list of initiatives, we would like to highlight a few of them.
On the occasion of the International Conference organised by the Mani Tese association in Florence, in Palazzo Vecchio, in November 1985, with the participation of distinguished international personalities (among them, the Brazilian Archbishop Dom Helder Camara and Abbé Pierre), the Centre collaborated on the drafting of the document-manifesto ‘For a World Constituent Assembly for Peace and Development: Appeal by the Youth of Mani Tese’.
As coordinator of the Human Rights Commission of the ‘Helsinki Citizens Assembly’ (HCA), founded by Vaclav Havel, the Centre drafted documents for the Moscow Meeting of the Conference on the Human Dimension of the CSCE (September-October 1991) and the HCA Conference in Bratislava (March 1992) on ‘Self-determination, Human and Peoples’ Rights, Minority Rights, Transnational Territories'.
In September 1992, the Centre's Appeal ‘for the democratisation of the United Nations’ was launched in Rome: among the first signatories were Norberto Bobbio and Bishop Tonino Bello. In the wake of this document, collaboration with the magazine ‘Nigrizia’ was carried out for four years, on a monthly basis, in the columns entitled ‘UN of Peoples’ and ‘Human Rights and ...’.
In early 1993, the direction of the Centre collaborated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the elaboration of the Italian proposal for an International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
In April 1999, at the end of a crowded seminar organised at the Faculty of Political Science in the University of Padova, the Centre launched an Appeal on Kosovo ‘For Peace in the Balkans with Legality’, the text of which was also sent to the President of the Republic, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, the Prime Minister, Massimo D'Alema, and the Presidents of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, Luciano Violante and Nicola Mancino respectively. The Centre received timely replies from the Quirinale and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and substantial letters signed by the Honourable Violante and Mancino, Presidents of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate respectively. This document, approved by the Tavola della Pace and the National Coordination of Local Authorities for Peace and Human Rights, formed the ‘platform’ for the Extraordinary March for Peace Perugia-Assisi on 16 May 1999.
Starting in 1995, the sequence of sessions of the ‘UN Peoples’ Assembly' began in the form of international civil society conferences convened by the “Peace Table” on the eve of the historic Perugia-Assisi Peace March. Since then, the Centre has been involved in thematic planning, producing documents on topics such as the world order based on international human rights law, international democracy, the economy of justice, and UN reform.
In this context, the document ‘Global Civil Society for the Reform and Democratisation of the United Nations’, presented at the Tavola della Pace National Seminar ‘Peace as a Political Project’ (Perugia, September 2004) and at the International Conference ‘Reclaim our UN’ (Padua, November 2004), among others, are worth mentioning.
In this same context of the development of a political culture based on the strong legality of human rights, the document prepared by the Centre's head office on the theme ‘Peace is not its name but what makes it: the Political Agenda for Human Rights’, and used as the working document of the 7th UN Assembly of Peoples ‘All Human Rights for All’ (Perugia, 5-6 October 2007), is worthy of note.
Within the framework of programmes promoted and financed by the European Commission, the study contributions that the Padova Centre made to the International Conferences, held in Brussels in the years 2002-2008, in collaboration with the networks of Jean Monnet Chairs and the European Community Study Associations (ECSA-World) on the topics of intercultural dialogue, human rights and world order should be noted.