Who are the humans behind human rights?
An ERC (UKRI-funded) research project led by Dr Agnieszka Kubal, Associate Professor, Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at Oxford University
This five-year research breaks new ground in studying the unprecedented human rights mobilisation in five countries of Eastern Europe – Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Hungary, and Russia – whose citizens until recently brought more than fifty per cent of all the claims to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).
This research is incredibly timely and urgent: while Russia has recently ceased being part of the European Convention system, the human rights lawyers keep pursuing justice for abuses at the international level. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has led to war-related human rights violations and indiscriminate attacks on civilians, requiring the involvement of the international human rights community. Meanwhile, in Poland and Hungary, human rights are being mobilised to counter democratic backsliding, and in Romania, to address the legacy of violent transitions.
Upcoming book announcement
The first research monograph resulting from the project has been contracted with UCL Press (in Open Access) under a title: ‘Who are the humans behind Human Rights? Historical and comparative perspectives from Eastern Europe and Russia’.
While there are many books about the institutionalisation of the European Convention of Human Rights in Eastern Europe and the corresponding legal alignments, our book does a different thing. We tell a story – a powerful and gripping story – of the Convention as seen from the perspective of its everyday users: lawyers, applicants, judges, and civil rights activists: the humans behind Human Rights.
This book enriches our understanding of human rights mobilisation by examining it through the lens of the ‘law in everyday life’ paradigm. Instead of focusing solely on formal legal structures or courtroom battles, it highlights how ordinary people engage with legal norms in their daily lives. This approach offers a more nuanced understanding of how human rights are lived and contested outside formal institutions.
Publications
Articles
Huszka, B. (2023) Restitutio Interruptus: Minority Churches, Property Rights and Europeanisation in Romania, Europe-Asia Studies, 75 (9): 1453–1474.
Kubal, A. (2023) Who Are the Humans Behind Human Rights in Poland? Preliminary Remarks on a Sociological Profile of Victims Before the ECtHR, European Court Review, vol. 11: 58-69
Kubal, A. (2023) The Women’s Complaint: sociolegal mobilization against authoritarian backsliding following the 2020 abortion law in Poland, Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe, 31 (3): 585-605
Kubal, A. (2023) Dissenting Consciousness: A Socio-Legal Analysis of Russian Migration Cases before the European Court of Human Rights, The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Civic and Political Studies, 18 (2): 57-77
Kubal, A. (2024) Judicial relational legal consciousness: authoritarian backsliding as a catalyst of change, Journal of Law and Society
Kubal, A. (2024) Queer coalition? The crisis of justice in Poland and the LGBT rights before the Polish courts, Europe-Asia Studies
Kubal, Agnieszka; Mrowicki, Marcin; (2024) Pushback or Backlash against the European Court of Human Rights? Russian Politics, 9 (1): 135-159.
Conference papers
Huszka B. (2024) Mixed legal framing: Mobilising European courts in defence of the rights of sexual minorities in Hungary and Romania, Gender Wars conference, Oxford, UK, 25-26 September 2024
Huszka, B. (2024) Mobilising European courts in the defence of the rights of sexual minorities in Romania and Hungary, RCSL conference, Bangor, Wales, UK, 3-6 September 2024
Huszka, B. (2024) ‘Like seeing in a fog:’ recording human rights violations in Ceaușescu’s Romania, BASEES conference, Cambridge, UK, 5-7 April 2024
Kubal, A (2024) Judicial Legal Consciousness in Poland - authoritarian backsliding as a catalyst of change?, BASEES conference, Cambridge, UK, 5-7 April 2024
Kubal, A. (2024) The epistemological reflection on the humans behind Human Rights in Eastern Europe and Russia, lecture, ELTE University, Budapest, Hungary, 2 May 2024
Kubal, A. (2024) Who Are the Humans Behind Human Rights in Eastern Europe and Russia?, Exploring the ‘Human’ of the European Court of Human Rights Workshop, Zurich, Switzerland, 5 September 2024
Oliinyk, H. (2024) From Silence to Solidarity: The Retrospective of the Human Rights Activism in Soviet Ukraine, BASEES conference, Cambridge, UK, 5-7 April 2024
Oliinyk, H. (2024) Rally Around Human Rights: Case of the Ukrainian Human Rights Lawyers. Ukrainian Identity, Regional Diversity, and Wartime Unity roundtable discussion at the British International Studies Association Conference, Birmingham, UK, 4-7 June 2024
Oliinyk, H. (2024) Search for Human Rights in the Ukrainian Communist Archives, Re(kn)own: Region(s) from Within conference organised by the RUTA Association, Carpathian Mountains, Ukraine, 27-30 June 2024
Shedov, D. (2023) Inventing a New Justice. Lawyer's Reflection on Litigation in Russia without the ECtHR, BASEES conference, Glasgow, UK, 31 March–2 April 2024
Shedov, D. (2023) Restrictions on access to historical documents in Russia, Meeting of the PACE Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, Larnaca, Cyprus, 22-23 May 2023
Op-eds and policy interventions
Huszka, B. (2024) The Impact of Enlargement on Human Rights in the EU: Disentangling negative Trends, EU Law Live
