Call for Papers: Thicker Notions of Human Rights , DEADLINE: 20 APRIL 2025

Human rights are increasingly described as in crisis. One reason for this is the fact that current accountability mechanisms cannot adequately deal with intricate and multilayered human rights violations that occur in rapidly changing and vastly complex social contexts. Thus, if human rights are to continue to offer a widely accepted framework for thinking about (social) justice, we urgently need to reconstruct the very notion of accountability on which it is pinned, so that better protection is offered. In spite of a relatively robust legal framework there is a continued reality of human rights violations and rather low degrees of accountability. This closing conference, ‘Thicker Notions of Human Rights Accountabilities’, revisits the questions of what qualifies as a human rights violation, who holds human rights duties and how to actually deliver human rights accountability in the context of pressing and complex challenges. Our particular concern is the disconnect between the formal legal system and the lived experiences of those who suffer harms that could logically be – but are not yet – understood as a human rights violation.

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS

We welcome both theoretical contributions and empirical work from interdisciplinary perspectives. We invite proposals speaking to one of five themes of the closing conference: