Specialization in Human Rights
For this specialization we advise you to register in the Major Human Rights, Gender and Conflict Studies: Social Justice Perspectives (SJP), but other Majors also give access to this specialization.
Human Rights are recognized by governments and civic organizations as integral to human development and positive social change. This specialization explores the deeper ramifications of how economic, social, civil, political and cultural rights can be protected at local, national, regional and international levels and through multi-layered strategies. Socio-legal approaches are combined with other approaches and practice-based use of case studies.
On this page we share background information on what used to be called the "HDS" specialization, including details of the teaching staff and course offering. Please also check out the Human Rights blog, which includes course-related readings, videos and information about research and other projects that the teaching staff have been involved with.
Teaching staff
Karin Arts, Professor of International Law and Development
Prof. dr. Karin Arts joined the ISS twenty years ago and has developed a very broad experience in teaching and researching human rights and social justice issues. In 2010 she was awarded a professorial chair by the Board of Erasmus University Rotterdam. She is a member of the International Committee on International Law and Sustainable Development of the International Law Association (ILA) as well as the Advisory Council on International Relations of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She has advised governments, the United Nations and NGOs and has published widely on human rights and in particular the rights of children as well as the European Union's policies on development co-operation.
For more information, see: www.iss.nl/arts.
Jeff Handmaker, Senior Lecturer in Law, Human Rights and Development
Dr. Jeff Handmaker joined the ISS in February 2007. He studied law in England and was called to the English bar in 1995. After working as a lawyer and human rights advocate in South Africa and elsewhere in Africa, The Middle East and Europe, he obtained a PhD in the sociology of law at Utrecht University with a thesis on "Advocating for Accountability: Civic-State Interactions to Protect Refugees in South Africa", published by Intersentia (2009). He has trained government officials, police officers, military personnel, lawyers, NGOs and journalists and has advised governments, the United Nations and civil society organisations in the development sector, with particular experience in West and Southern Africa and Palestine. Since 1999, he has published scholarly work, in academic and other journals, as well as four books and one special issue of the South African Journal of Human Rights.
For more information, see: www.iss.nl/handmaker.
Helen Hintjens, Senior Lecturer in Development and Social Justice
Dr. Helen Hintjens has a background in teaching, research and advocacy especially in the field of International Development, where her specific interests include: genocide and post-genocide Rwandan politics; conflict and peace in the Great Lakes regions; media studies, especially radio and visual arts; non-surveillance and undocumented people in Europe and networks of pro-asylum advocates.
For more information, see: www.iss.nl/hintjens.
Rachel Kurian, Senior Lecturer in International Labour Economics
Dr. Rachel Kurian is a Senior Lecturer in International Labour Economics at the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague. She has degrees in Mathematics and Economics, and has studied at the Universities of Madras, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, University of Cambridge, UK and University of Amsterdam where she completed her Ph.D in 1989. Dr. Kurian’s interests lie in the arena of migration, human rights, poverty, gender, trade unions, and labour (including child labour) in the context of economic restructuring – a focus reflected in her publications and current curriculum. Her wide-ranging interest and expertise is corroborated by extensive field experience in Asia (Sri Lanka, India, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and South Korea), Latin America (Colombia, Peru, Chile and Ecuador), the Caribbean (Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados) and Africa (Mauritius, Tanzania).
For more information, see: www.iss.nl/kurian.
Human Rights Courses
Core Human Rights Courses on offer in 2011-12
As of September 2012, what was formerly known as "HDS" (Human Rights, Development and Social Justice) will form part of a larger Major programme known as "SJP" (Human Rights, Conflict and Gender Studies: Social Justice Perspectives). The course offering is also likely to change.
The following provide an overview of the core human rights courses that are on offer.
4216: Human Rights, Law and Society
Since the establishment of the United Nations in 1945, a vast process of ‘legalization’ of human rights has taken place. Both at international and national levels, many human rights issues have become codified in legal texts. A potential risk of this process of legalization is that, as a result of the emphasis on law and legal means, human rights might become reduced to legal frameworks, issues and procedures. Therefore, on the one hand this course is rooted in the idea that law indeed is an important potential facilitator of, or hindrance to, the realization of human rights. On the other hand the course will highlight that the fulfilment of human rights and social justice requires much more than an adequate legal framework alone and can be understood as a cultural system that interacts with economic, social, political and cultural processes. The course nevertheless advocates that, anyone who is interested in working on or analyzing human rights issues should have a basic grasp of the workings of international and national human rights law.
Aimed at a mixed audience of students with and without a legal background, this course provides a basis for students to understand the role of law in the protection and promotion of human rights more fully, and to critically evaluate the legal structures that frame human rights and the related possibilities for civic action. As the course is part of the curriculum of an MA in Development Studies, ‘development’ as a human rights issue and the role to be played by developing and developed states and other relevant actors are central concerns. Different examples of international and national human rights law-making, monitoring and enforcement efforts will also be analysed and discussed, all in a non-technical legal manner. While law and legal remedies are deemed important, the shortcomings of legal approaches to human rights and development clearly expose a role for critical socio-legal and social science analyses, theories and methods, i.e. for going well beyond human rights law.
For more information and updates about this, and other courses, please consult the MA Calendar.
4303: Realising Rights and Social Justice
This course starts with detailed consideration of the theories behind ‘rights-based approaches’ to development. It asks how the mobilisation of groups and individuals for human rights realization has been understood in the social science and development literature. The focus will be on understanding how the communities that face harsh forms of social exclusion and human insecurity, frame, claim and realize their human rights, alongside other actors, policy makers and human rights advocates. How do situations of ‘transitional justice’ and marginalization influence the framing, claiming and realization of human rights. What strategies do specific groups use to leverage rights from both state and non-state actors, through legal and non-legal means? We integrate economic and social with civil and political rights, and use examples from past human rights campaigns and struggles to illustrate the problems in relation to e.g. indigenous people, slum dwellers, migrants, landless farmers, the disabled and other socially excluded groups. The course has a focus on methodologies used to tackle entrenched social exclusion and human rights violations within specific societies. Transnationally, too, there is an examination of how human rights advocacy can influence policy and practice in various contexts. The problem of post-conflict and transitional justice is a focus for a role-play exercise, which over an extended period enabled students to learn experientially as well as to study, how complex rights-claiming strategies can be understood within a specific and insecure setting. Students will be encouraged to critically reflect on how they worked with other actors within such a setting and are confronted with the ‘realities on the ground’ through a simulated environment on-line. The whole course aims to complete the human rights strand within the Social Justice major by providing a range of critical insights and practice-related skills that help in realizing more socially just human rights outcomes, even in the most unpromising circumstances.
For more information and updates about this, and other courses, please consult the MA Calendar.
For those interested in digging deeper ...
Socio-legal critiques (general)
- Law and Society Association
- Socio-Legal Studies Association
- Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, Oxford University and especially work on Transitional Justice
- Centre for Socio-Legal Research, University of Cape Town
- Halliday and Schmidt (eds), Human rights brought home: socio-legal perspectives on human rights in national contexts, Oxford: Hart, 2004
Human rights and civic advocacy
- Journal of Human Rights Practice (new journal, first issue available for free)
- Center for Constitutional Rights
- Human Rights Watch, International Justice
- Coalition for an International Criminal Court
- Film: The Trials of Henry Kissinger (trailer and link to full-length film)
- Barbara Harrell-Bond, Starting a Movement of Refugee Legal Aid Organizations in the South, International Journal of Refugee Law, Vol 19(4), 2007
Human rights as politics
- Stolen Youth, on the administrative detention of Palestinian children by Israel. Documentary produced by Defence for Children International (Palestine Section), 2004 (18 min)
- Nelson Mandela, "Prepared to Die", Extract from testimony at his trial in Pretoria, South Africa in 1964 (1 min) -- See also: full text of Mandela's statement.
