Join us for a presentation of Grażyna Baranowska’s book Rights of Families of Disappeared Persons: How International Bodies Address the Needs of Families of Disappeared Persons in Europe published in June 2021.
This book examines how international judicial and non-judicial bodies in Europe address the needs of the families of forcibly disappeared persons. The needs in question are returning the remains of disappeared persons; the right to truth; the acceptance of responsibility by states; and the right to compensation. These have been identified as the four most commonly shared basic and fundamental needs of families in which an adult was disappeared many years previously and is now assumed to be dead, which is representative of the situation of the vast majority of families of disappeared persons in Europe.
The analysis covers the judgments and decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, the UN Human Rights Committee, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the Human Rights Chamber for Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Human Rights Advisory Panel in Kosovo, as well as the activities of the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus, the Special Process on Missing Persons in the Territory of former Yugoslavia, the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances and the International Commission on Missing Persons. In so doing, the book demonstrates whether, how, and based on what principles these four needs of the families of disappeared persons can constitute a claim based on international human rights law.
This event is part of the Spotlight on Scholarship event series hosted by the Centre for Fundamental Rights.
Prior registration is required. To register please visit the event page on Eventbrite. Registered attendees will receive the login details via e-mail prior to the event.
Speakers
Author
Grażyna Baranowska is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Fundamental Rights at the Hertie School in Berlin. Her project, MIRO, funded through the EU’s Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, seeks to identify and interpret international legal obligations regarding missing migrants and accordingly critique and shape the practices of the EU, its Member States, and pertinent international organisations. Baranowska is also Assistant Professor in the Institute of Law Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences. In her former work as a researcher and policy advisor on enforced disappearances at the German Institute for Human Rights, she published a report on “Disappeared Migrants and Refugees”. Between 2016 and 2019, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher in an EU funded project on Memory Laws in European and Comparative Perspective.
Picture: © BOK + Gärtner GmbH, Karsten Ziegengeist
Discussants
Olivier de Frouville is a Professor at the University of Paris 2 (Panthéon-Assas) and Director of the Paris Human Rights Center (C.R.D.H.). His fields of research cover mainly general international law, the theory of international law, international human rights law, international humanitarian law and international criminal law. Parallel to his academic carreer, Olivier de Frouville has worked for more than twenty years as a human rights expert in the United Nations. In June 2019, he was elected as a member of the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances. Previously he has been a member of the UN Human Rights Committee (2015-2018) and of the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (2008-2014), of which he was the Chair-Rapporteur between April 2012 and October 2013. He was also a member of the Coordination Committee of UN Special Procedures in 2013-2014.
Manfred Nowak is Secretary General of the Global Campus of Human Rights in Venice, Italy, as well as Professor for International Law and Human Rights at the Vienna University and co-founder of the Vienna Forum for Democracy and Human Rights. Between 2004 and 2010 he served as the UN-Special Rapporteur on Torture. In October 2016, Manfred Nowak was appointed Independent Expert leading the UN Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty. He was also the UN Expert in charge of the Special Process on Missing Persons in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia (1994-1997) and member of the Un Working Group on Enforced Disappearances (1993-2001). Manfred Nowak is author of over 600 publications in the area of international human rights.
Picture: © Applied Human Rights Ruedastudio
Chair
Cathryn Costello is Professor of Fundamental Rights at the Hertie School and Co-Director of the Centre for Fundamental Rights. She is a leading scholar of international and European refugee and migration law, and also explores the relationship between migration and labour law in her work. She is also Professor II at the Faculty of Law, University of Oslo, and is currently on special leave from her post as Professor of Refugee and Migration Law at the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford.
