Europe enjoys the world’s most advanced regional human rights system. Its "jewel in the crown" is the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) of 1950, the world’s first and still unique human rights treaty, adopted by the Council of Europe (CoE) as a reaction to the mass atrocities of the Second World War. 47 States have ratified the Convention. Only in the year 2012 more than 65’000 applications were submitted and some 128’000 cases were pending before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). Given its case load, the ECtHR has also been labelled “victim of its own success”.

The CoE’s system for the protection of human rights will be in the central focus of this course. The course provides a general introduction to its history, institutions and instruments. It will discuss the changing views about the tasks of the ECtHR and analyse prospects and reform of the system. In addition, the course will examine "absolute" guarantees (right to life, prohibition of torture), the freedoms of expression and of the press, multiculturalism/minority rights protection, and democracy/the right to free elections. It will also deal with social rights protection, a particularly burning issue in times of financial crisis.

Likewise other important actors besides the CoE in the field of human rights in Europe will be dealt with, namely the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the European Union (EU) which have become an important actors in the field of human rights. Questions of complementarity, overlap and “rivalry” between these organisations will be discussed. Finally the course will briefly compare the European system to other regional systems of human rights protection, namely the Inter-American and the African ones.

This course will be of interest to students with an interest in human rights law and how it applies in the regional context of Europe. It will offer a balance of theoretical and practical insights and provide the opportunity for students to engage in research in a dynamic field. As such, it will be of particular interest to those students seeking future employment in the field of government, international affairs, journalism, as well as traditional advocacy work. The course complements other JD/PG course offerings in the area of human rights and international law.

In 2014, this course is taught by Professor Christina Binder from the Department of European, International and Comparative Law at the University of Vienna. Professor Binder was a visiting fellow at the Lauterpacht Center for International Law in Cambridge (2007-08) and at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg (2008-10). She is member of the Young Academy of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and of the ILA Committees on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and on Feminism in International Law. She has also taught at the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna, the University of Yogyakarta (Indonesia) and the PUCE (Sao Paolo, Brazil). Professor Binder has likewise worked as legal and electoral expert for election observation and assessment missions, including Ecuador (2007 and 2009) and Rwanda (2008 and 2010) with the EU as well as Uzbekistan (2009) and Estonia (2011) with OSCE/ODIHR.

More information can be found on the Course Outline Website.