Researchers from the project 'Deep Impact through Soft Jurisprudence?' funded by the German Research Foundation, DFG, shared key insights on UN human rights treaty body case law with the UN Petitions Unit in Geneva.
On 27 May 2025, the research team behind Deep Impact through Soft Jurisprudence? The Contribution of United Nations Treaty Body Case Law to the Development of International Human Rights Law delivered a seminar to the United Nations Petitions Unit in Geneva. The Petitions Unit plays a crucial role in processing human rights petitions submitted to UN human rights treaty bodies.
Centre’s postdoctoral researchers, Dr Betül Durmuş and Dr Ignatius Yordan, were joined by project lead and Centre’s Fellow Professor Başak Çalı and the project’s collaborating researcher Dr Alexandre Skander Galand to present the findings from their systematic and comparative analysis of the case law of eight UN human rights treaty bodies. The discussion centred on strategies to enhance the accessibility and impact of UN treaty body jurisprudence.
“The UN Human Rights Treaty Bodies have so much to offer to domestic and international judges on how to interpret human rights treaties. Making their reasoning more accessible to legal audiences is a key step in enhancing the impact of international human rights law,” emphasised Dr Durmuş, while Dr Ignatius Yordan Nugraha added, “This event was part of an ongoing knowledge exchange programme between our research team and the UN Petitions Unit. Interacting with the legal team at the UN has also greatly improved our understanding of the cases we analyse.”
A major output of the project, a jointly authored monograph entitled Leading Cases in UN Human Rights Law, is forthcoming in 2026 with Oxford University Press.
The project reflects one of the main research themes of the Centre for Fundamental Rights – the role of international institutions in addressing current and future challenges to the protection of fundamental rights. The study’s results will benefit both scholars and practitioners of human rights law, including judges, lawyers, advocates and researchers. This three-year (2023-2026) research project is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).
