The worldwide recognition and protection of human rights is a process that began in the twentieth century, when many of these rights were already guaranteed at the constitutional level, at least in some states. Since then, the human rights regulatory framework built by the international community has achieved a solid legal basis that is widely developed with fundamental universal legal norms.
However, this international recognition of human rights does not resolve the question of their effective enjoyment at both the individual and collective levels. While it is true that the responsibility to respect human rights lies within each and every one of the states that form the international community, it is no less true that the internationalisation of human rights has generated the expectation that an effective protection of such rights should also have an international dimension.
In the course we will examine the process of internationalisation of human rights at the universal level, from an essentially normative perspective. We will discuss the foundations and evolution of human rights and study the main international human rights protection instruments, with a specific focus on the United Nations and European systems. The existence of these instruments and mechanisms is often unknown by citizens and they are underutilised in the guarantee and protection of human rights. This course aims to increase students’ skills and knowledge in order for them to be used within their fields of work.
The language of this course is English