Human Rights

Since its foundation in 1998 the MA in Human Rights Program remains the first in the region to offer graduate education in international and European human rights law to students from various parts of the world, including Central and Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union and the Balkans. In recent years the number of students from Africa, the Americas and from Asia has increased considerably. The MA in Human Rights Program recruits applicants from all disciplines, who wish to understand the theoretical and policy implications of defending human rights and acquire the skills for successful human rights protection and advocacy.The interdisciplinary MA in Human Rights degree combines social science, policy-based approach with legal science, thus non-lawyers are given an opportunity to benefit from a curriculum with a legal focus. Teaching is designed to incorporate both theoretical perspectives and concrete empirical analyses of the most important questions in human rights. The program offers practical instruction in the specific legal mechanisms and institutional processes which may be used by national human rights organizations to effectively approach human rights issues that transitional and also established democracies might confront. Courses familiarize students with the key legal concepts and enable them to use basic legal reasoning and comparative arguments. Areas of research and teaching cover – among others – international mechanisms for the protection of human rights, with particular focus on the Council of Europe and the United Nations, freedom of expression and freedom of religion, human rights and criminal justice, political rights, non-discrimination, minority protection, human rights and development politics, human rights in Africa, and the constitutional protection of rights on a basic level. Rigorous and closely monitored coursework provides the tools of analysis, critical reading and writing skills to enable students to make a significant and lasting contribution both to the protection of rights in their home countries and to enforcement of human rights at large.