We are an interdisciplinary team of scholars and practitioners studying international human rights system and especially its courts and tribunals. Our current projects focus on execution and enforcement of human rights judgments, reparations and compensation in international law, and access to international courts and tribunals. We bring together scholars from law, politics, social sciences, psychology, criminology and computer sciences to understand the mechanisms driving the status quo. Our aim is to understand how human rights victims access international justice and when states change their behaviour in response to judgments of international human rights courts. We seek to come up with new solutions and incentives to enable equal access to human rights justice, an efficient and accountable functioning of human rights institutions, and good compliance with human rights judgments.
Automation & Digital Human Rights
This project studies how automation is increasingly being used by international courts and tribunals. We investigate the permissiblity of such use as well as the need for accountability to human rights victims. We also consider how automation impacts existing rights and creates new ones.
Break the Bias
This ERC-funded project looks at how victims access international human rights courts and treaty bodies. We study inequality in access to understand which groups are successful in obtaining human rights protection and which fall through the cracks.
LATEST PUBLICATIONS
Veronika Fikfak and Laurence R. Helfer. 'Automating International Human Rights Adjudication.' (2024) 45.1 Michigan Journal of International Law.
Veronika Fikfak. 'Against Settlement in the European Court of Human Rights'. (2022) 20.3 International Journal of Constitutional Law.
Aysel Küçüksu. 'Proactive Prevention: Denmark's Domestic Practices of Human Rights Compliance.' (2023) Journal of Human Rights Practice.
Ula Aleksandra Kos. 'Signalling in European Rule of Law cases: Hungary and Poland as Case Studies.' (2023) Human Rights Law Review.
Ula Aleksandra Kos. 'Controlling the narrative: Hungary’s post-2010 strategies of non-compliance before the European Court of Human Rights.' (2023) 19.2 European Constitutional Law Review.
Katharina Luckner, Veronika Fikfak. 'Not all nations at all times: How States Imitate Each Other’s Behavior Towards Non-Compliance with International Law Norms: an ABM proposal.' JURIX 2023 Proceedings.
Katharina Luckner, Veronika Fikfak. 'Applications of ABM in International Legal Research: The case of Compliance.' CEUR-WS Proceedings 3182.
Veronika Fikfak and Lora Izvorova. 'Language and Persuasion: Human Dignity at the European Court of Human Rights.' (2022) 22.4 Human Rights Law Review.
Niccolò Ridi and Veronika Fikfak. 'Sanctioning to Change State Behaviour.' (2022) 13.2 Journal of International Dispute Settlement.
NEWS
6 March 2024
Veronika Fikfak and Laurence Helfer spoke at AI Ethics Institute in Oxford today, where they presented their forthcoming article Automating International Human Rights Adjudication.
26 February 2024
We are celebrating today on humanrightsnudge! Lora Izvorova successfully defended her PhD dissertation at the University of Cambridge. We congratulate Lora on her achievement. Keep an eye out for her forthcoming book!
14 December 2023
Our work was featured in the Slovenian Delo Znanost. Veronika Fikfak gave an interview presenting the major results of the HRNUDGE project and our future plans. The interview is available in Slovenian here. Our results are also available in a recording of our lecture to the University of Ljubljana.
23 November 2023
Veronika Fikfak has been awarded a new ERC grant to study inequality in how victims access international human rights courts. The funding to support BREAKtheBIAS project will enable us to expand our team and to build a partnership with the Institute of Criminology in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
21 November 2023
A new member has joined our team - Adarsh Prabhakaran. Adarsh is a computer scientist and he will be in charge of designing a new agent-based model to show how states behave in response to judgments of the ECtHR.
3 July 2023
Veronika Fikfak's article Against Settlement was awarded a Best Paper Prize (Best Mention) by the International Society of Public Law.
EJIL Live Dr Veronika Fikfak
