Call for Papers: Urgency and Human Rights

The Department of International and European Law of the Law Faculty of the Radboud University Nijmegen, in cooperation with the Seconda Università di Napoli Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza and the Ghent Human Rights Centre, have issued a call for papers for a conference on "Urgency and Human Rights," which will take place May 29-30, 2015 in Nijmegen. Here's the call:

Call for Papers

Urgency and Human Rights

Conference of 29-30 May 2015

Deadline for abstracts: 15 February 2015

The Department of International and European Law of the Law Faculty of the Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands in cooperation with the Seconda Università di Napoli, Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza, Italy and Ghent Human Rights Centre, Belgium will host a two-day conference on ‘Urgency and Human Rights’ planned for Friday 29 and Saturday 30 May 2015, in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

This conference firstly aims to bring together existing scholarship regarding urgency and human rights and discuss the evolving practices in this respect with practitioners. Secondly, its objective is to allow for in-depth discussion of what should be the role of the domestic judiciary when dealing with urgent cases.

For the purpose of this conference ‘urgent cases’ are considered to be cases aimed at preventing irreparable harm to persons. Provisional measures are an important feature in any discussion on urgent proceedings. They are predominantly, but not exclusively, applicable in situations aimed at preventing the violation of the right to life and the prohibition of torture and cruel treatment. (For more information see the Concept paper for the conference)

The conference will feature plenary sessions with invited speakers and roundtables. Invited speakers include current and former judges of various international tribunals, as well as legal practitioners and scholars.

Discussants will examine the above questions regarding urgency, including the tool of provisional measures/interim measures, from the perspectives of the judge/adjudicator, the litigant and the scholar. Apart from looking at the role of the judiciary, this conference allows us to discuss the role of lawyers in considering the broader impact of their litigation and the importance for lawyers of strategic litigation. By doing so, the conference aims to have both scholarly and societal impact.

Roundtables are foreseen on Urgency in domestic proceedings on human rights; Urgency in expulsion and extradition cases and Urgency in detention cases. For the roundtables a call for papers is issued. Proposals for papers (abstracts) should correspond to the overall conference theme and can relate to (but need not be limited to) the following topics:

• How should courts deal with urgency at the international and domestic level?
• What types of situations are considered to be urgent: extradition, expulsion, execution, detention conditions, death threats or also provision of basic subsistence rights?
• How do international adjudicators (courts and other monitoring bodies deciding on individual complaints) deal with evidentiary matters in the face of urgent pending cases? In particular, how do they deal with the available evidence in the face of a state’s request to withdraw provisional measures?
• How do domestic courts in your jurisdiction deal with interim measures ordered/indicated by international adjudicators?
• What is the role of these domestic courts when they interpret, apply and implement international obligations in urgent cases? Do they distinguish between the individual cases of petitioners who actually brought cases internationally and cases of others similarly situated?
• What is the role of lawyers in deciding on urgent litigation? To what extent should they anticipate the long-term effects and the interests of a larger group of people?
• What have been good approaches to the right to an effective remedy developed in domestic systems for addressing urgent situations (both those situations in which international adjudicators were involved and those dealt with at the domestic level alone) pending litigation?

We welcome abstracts and suggestions related to the questions raised above and to the conference theme more generally.

The deadline for submissions of paper abstracts and panel descriptions (max. 300 words) is 15 February 2015. Abstracts should be sent to: Ms. R. Möhrlein, LL.M, r.mohrlein@jur.ru.nl, co-organizer of the conference. Authors of the selected abstracts will be notified at the latest by 15 March 2015. They will be invited to prepare a conference paper (max. 8500 words) and to take part in a roundtable discussion during the conference. A subsequent book including selected conference papers is foreseen.

For any further information or questions with regard to the call for papers and the conference, please contact Ms. R. Möhrlein.