Duration
04 Sep 2023 - 08 Sep 2023
On February 24th 2022 Annalena Baerbock, the foreign minister of Germany, commented on Russias invasion into Ukraine: „Today we woke up in a different world”! The statement referred to the perceived break down of the post-WW2 international order comprised by the UN Charter that was to protect both the sovereignty of nation-states and human rights. Of course, there have always been tensions between these two pillars of the international order, but the end of the Cold War raised hopes that the tension could be productively addressed by the doctrines of humanitarian intervention and responsibility to protect (R2P), as well as by establishing the International Criminal Court. These doctrines reflected the centrality of human rights for the international order, at least from a Western point of view. In practice, the implementation of these doctrines led to interventions that restricted massive human rights violations (like in Bosnia and Herzegovina, East Timor, Liberia, Sierra Leone), but also to interventions with disastrous consequences (Iraq; Libya). The Russian invasion into Ukraine made it obvious that at least the sovereignty pillar of the international order had crumbled.
These events bring to the fore questions like: What is the place of human rights under these new international circumstances? How can human rights be protected in face of a danger of a wider war in Europe? Do the UN still have a future? In which ways do they have to be reformed? Has the spread of liberal democracy reached its limits and what are the repercussions for international human rights protection?
We invite contributions addressing these questions from political science, philosophy, law and other related disciplines including history of ideas. Please send an abstract of maximum 250 words to Tom Gaebelein at: tom@gaebelein.info by April 30th 2023. You will be informed about your participation by May 14th 2023. The selected participants will be invited to present their papers. The participation fee for the course is 60 EUR.