In person icon A Transdisciplinary Discussion on Human Rights Accountability and Demands of Societal Change: Globalisation, Transition, and Crises

Abstract

If human rights are to continue to offer a widely accepted framework for thinking about justice, we urgently need to re-think their foundations. This includes the very notion of accountability on which the human rights framework is underpinned, which is pivotal for the protection of human rights. Underlying these notions of accountability are often implicit assumptions about the role of human rights law in societal change. Human rights law can be understood as codifying legal and political restraints and minimum conditions and preserving them despite societal changes and utilitarian demands. At the same time, historically informed injustices, postcolonial and post-conflict contexts, and the current unsustainability of extractivist, capitalist approaches globally raise both the necessity and desirability for human rights law to adapt and play a transformative role in creating societal change. Further, crises and emergencies can result in calls in the opposite direction: for urgent and immediate responses that may deviate from established human rights norms. This panel fosters a transdisciplinary discussion between legal, socio-legal, and extra-legal approaches to human rights accountability in contexts where change is necessary. The panel focuses on those contexts which present different kinds of challenges to the temporal orderings of legal approaches to human rights: transition, crisis, globalisation, and struggle. The format is five paper presentations followed by a final presentation by the Chair who will produce a synthesis of the different presentations on the context of human rights accountability in the demands of change. What are the potentials and limitations of legal approaches to human rights accountability? Sarah Kerremans (Ghent University) describes persistent indigenous mobilization and ongoing struggle for human rights realization in Peru. Her empirical research elucidates the role of legal and extra-legal responses from the government and oil industry to attempt to contain, and indefinitely delay the resolution of, the conflict. Marion Sandner (Hasselt University) discusses legal approaches to contemporary crises which challenge existing minimum protections. She focuses on how legal responses distinguish between states’ progressive and retrogressive measures to realise economic, social and cultural rights and what this means for how human rights law understands change in contexts of crisis. What can human rights law learn from other fields? Tine Destrooper (Ghent University) details how transitional justice approaches and discourses are increasingly adopted in aparadigmatic contexts for which they were not initially intended. She posits this can be explained through reference to how transitional justice offers a more multi-dimensional and encompassing understanding of accountability than legal human rights accountability in contexts where change is needed. Elif Durmuş (Antwerp University) critiques the Westphalian origins of human rights regime and how they are ill-suited for the realities of globalisation. She recommends new means of identifying human rights duties and duty-bearers that account for these realities. How can legal and extra-legal approaches co-constitute human rights accountability? The panel concludes with an empirical example of how legal and extra-legal modes of accountability can support each other in the context of criminal accountability for human rights violations. Brigitte Herremans (Ghent University) investigates civil society initiatives and artistic practices connected to extraterritorial court cases concerning Syrian state torture. The panel concludes with a final discussion by Ben Grama (Ghent University) on how these varying approaches can all contribute to a thicker notion of accountability.

Title	Details
Indigenous Struggles for Participation in Peru’s Oil Circuit: Disrupting Unaccountability and Transitioning to a Post-Oil Future?	View Paper Details
Adjudicating Economic and Social Rights During Structural Crises – Progress Despite Retrogression?	View Paper Details
A Practice-Based Re-Appraisal of Transitional Justice as a Proto-Theory of Thick Accountability in Contemporary Justice Struggles	View Paper Details
Regulating the Many Powerful: What Human Rights Can Learn From Other Legal Fields in Holding Plural, Diverse, Intertwined Actors Accountable	View Paper Details
Ordinary Courts, Informal Justice Efforts and Accountability for Massive Human Rights Violations in Syria: An Empirical Analysis of How the Al-Khatib Trial and Dabbagh Case Contribute to a Dense Accountability Matrix	View Paper Details