Coordinator/Lecturer: Julia Kozma, Member of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT, Council of Europe),

Lecturers: Claudia Lam, Adviser at the Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights (Council of Europe); Paul Lemmens, Judge at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR, Council of Europe)

This seminar is aimed at acquainting the students with the main concepts and principles of human rights law. Starting with an interactive task for students, in the course of which they are given the opportunity to present their own understanding and existing knowledge of the international, regional and national human rights regimes, the history and philosophy of human rights, differentiation from related concepts such as refugee law and humanitarian law, the main universal and regional human rights treaties and institutions, and key principles such as universality, inalienability and indivisibility of human rights will be critically discussed. At the end of this part, students should feel comfortable in the use of basic international legal terminology.
The second part of the seminar will look at the substance of different categories of rights, and related State obligations (respect-protect-fulfil). Based on the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), derogations from and limitations of human rights will be explained. Students will have the opportunity to apply the ECtHR’s proportionality test on a number of short cases, with the help of a step-by-step analysis tool that will be handed out to them.