Human Rights Speaker Series - Righting Wrongs: The Dynamics of Implementing International Human Rights Decisions

This dialogue session brings together the four expert members of The ESRC Human Rights Law Implementation Project, who for the almost 5 years have been trying to understand what hinders and helps the implementation of international decisions taken by supranational bodies.

These four experts have been examining the dynamics of implementation at the European, African and Inter-American Systems as well as the UN treaty monitoring bodies through the selection of specific cases decided by these systems against 9 countries (3 in Europe, 3 in the Americas and 3 in Africa). They carried out more than 300 semi-structure interviews, more than 15 focus groups as well as other workshops and events to gather data to inform their findings. A Special Issues of the Journal of Human Rights Practice (OUP) came out in October 2020 with the major findings of the project (Volume 12, issue 1). At the webinar, the 4 experts will dialogue about their findings which will include reflection on challenges but also on good practice.

Speaker biographies

Dr Alice Donald

Dr Alice Donald is a Senior Lecturer, co-Director of Teaching, Learning and Quality, and co-Chair of Ethics in the School of Law at Middlesex University, London. Her research interests include the relationship between human rights and democratic governance and matters related to human rights implementation. She was co-investigator on the ESRC-funded Human Rights Law Implementation Project, working principally on human rights implementation in Europe. She is co-author with Philip Leach of Parliaments and the European Court of Human Rights (Oxford University Press, 2016). 

Professor Philip Leach

Philip Leach is Professor of Human Rights Law at Middlesex University, a solicitor, and Director of the European Human Rights Advocacy Centre (EHRAC: ehrac.org.uk), also based at Middlesex University, London. He has extensive experience of representing applicants before the European Court of Human Rights, in particular from the former Soviet region, as well as the UK and Turkey. He researches and publishes widely in the field of international human rights law. He was a member of the Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody from 2009-2015 and a member of the Harris Review (2014-2015). He was appointed Specialist Adviser to the Joint Committee on Human Rights for its inquiry into mental health and deaths in prison in 2016-2017. He is Co-Supervisor of the Turkey Human Rights Litigation Support Project. He is Vice-Chair of the European Implementation Network (EIN), a member of the Advisory Board of the Open Society Justice Initiative, and a former trustee of the Media Legal Defence Initiative and the Human Dignity Trust. He is the author of ‘Taking a Case to the European Court of Human Rights’, 4th ed., Oxford University Press, 2017. In 2015, Leach was named Human Rights Lawyer of the Year by the Law Society of England and Wales.

Professor Rachel Murray

Rachel Murray is Professor of International Human Rights Law at the University of Bristol and Director of its Human Rights Implementation Centre. Rachel undertakes regular work on the African human rights system, implementation of human rights law, OPCAT and torture prevention, among other areas. She has written widely in this area (e.g. Implementation of the Findings of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, with Debbie Long, Cambridge University Press, 2015; The Optional Protocol to the UN Convention Against Torture, OUP, with Steinerte, Evans and Hallo de Wolf), and articles in leading legal human rights journals. She also advises national, regional and international organisations as well as governments and individuals on human rights law. She has held a number of grants, including a major grant from the ESRC on implementation which tracked decisions from the regional and UN treaty bodies to examine the extent to which the States have complied with them (http://www.bristol.ac.uk/law/hrlip/). She is the Vice Chair of the Board of the Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa, is a Fellow of the Human Rights Centre at the University of Essex and a member of Doughty Street Chambers. She is also a magistrate sitting in Bristol.

Professor Clara Sandoval

Professor Clara Sandoval is a qualified lawyer, Professor in the School of Law at Essex University, member of the Human Rights Centre and Co-Director of the Essex Transitional Justice Network. She has been Acting Director of the Human Rights Centre, Director of the Essex Transitional Justice Network (ETJN), and former Director of the LLM in International Human Rights Law. Clara is also part of the Faculty teaching at the Master in Transitional Justice, Human Rights and the Rule of Law at the Geneva Academy. She teaches and researches on areas related to the Inter-American System of Human Rights, Transitional Justice and the Right to Reparation. She is co-author of Doctrine, Practice, and Advocacy in the Inter-American Human Rights System, with Bettinger-Lopez, C., Cavallaro, J., Duhaime, B., Dulitzky, A., and Nadeo, C., (OUP, 2019). She was a co-investigator of the ESRC funded "Human Rights Law Implementation Project", where she was responsible for the Americas part of the project, looking at specific cases in Canada, Colombia and Guatemala. She also engages in human rights litigation, training and capacity building with organisations such as REDRESS. Her latest litigation before the Inter-American System is the case of Azul Rojas Marin and Other v. Peru, decided by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in March 2020.

Register for this online webinar on Zoom.