Global Campus Open Knowledge Repository

Our Open Knowledge Repository is a digital service that collects, preserves, and distributes all digital materials resulting from the rich and varied production of the Global Campus of Human Rights. It is an ever growing collection which aims to give visibility to our research outputs, educational content, and multimedia materials; sustain open access for knowledge transfer; and foster communication within and beyond academia.

 

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Now showing 1 - 5 of 7

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Environmental justice in the era of green extractivism. How governance of lithium shapes environmental justice in Chile’s Salar de Atacama
(2026) Malkin, Emily; Duarte, Felipe
The global transition to low-carbon energy systems has driven unprecedented demand for critical minerals, positioning lithium as essential to decarbonisation while intensifying concerns over the environmental and social impacts of extraction. This dissertation examines how environmental justice is shaped by the governance of lithium extraction through a case study of Chile's Salar de Atacama. Using a qualitative case study methodology, the research analyses the evolution of Chile's lithium governance and evaluates the role of domestic and international legal frameworks through the environmental justice dimensions of distributional, procedural and recognitional justice. The analysis draws upon legal and policy documents, academic literature, government publications, corporate reports and secondary empirical evidence. The findings demonstrate that Chile has strengthened governance through increased state involvement, enhanced environmental regulation and greater recognition of Indigenous participation. These reforms have improved aspects of environmental justice but have not eliminated persistent inequalities. Environmental burdens remain concentrated among Indigenous communities, participation largely operates through consultation rather than shared decision-making, and Indigenous knowledge systems continue to receive only partial recognition within governance processes. The dissertation argues that these limitations arise not only from weaknesses in legal implementation but also from the broader political economy of the green transition, in which governance primarily manages the impacts of extraction rather than determining whether extraction is compatible with environmental justice. It concludes that while governance reforms can improve environmental justice outcomes, they remain structurally constrained in their ability to reconcile an expanding extractive economy with the principles of environmental justice.
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Defending human rights defenders in the European Union: protection mechanisms, structural gaps and hybrid repression
(2026) Maguta, Pavel; Suntinger, Walter
Human rights defenders play a vital role in turning human rights, democracy and the rule of law into lived practice. However, within the EU, those who document violations, support affected communities, litigate public-interest cases or challenge abuses of power increasingly face criminalisation, abusive litigation, security-based narratives, surveillance, funding insecurity and bureaucratic obstruction. This thesis uses the concept of hybrid repression to capture how such distinct pressures may converge across legal, administrative, political, financial, technological and discursive domains, narrowing the space in which human rights work remains possible. This thesis examines the safeguards available to defenders within the EU and the wider European legal and institutional setting, and asks why they often remain insufficient when pressure takes cumulative and dispersed forms in Member States. Its focus is the Union’s internal sphere, rather than EU external human rights policy or defenders outside the EU as a distinct field. Methodologically, it combines doctrinal analysis of EU, Council of Europe and OSCE instruments with socio-legal and political-science insights into cumulative pressure on rights-defending activity. Selected national examples are used to illustrate recurring patterns, without developing country case studies. The thesis shows that EU law and policy provide important resources for defenders, including fundamental-rights guarantees, sector-specific instruments, monitoring channels, funding tools and broader European standards. However, these resources remain dispersed and unevenly accessible. Their effectiveness is constrained by limited recognition of defenders in that capacity, inconsistent implementation, delayed remedies and limited capacity to respond to cumulative patterns of pressure. The thesis concludes that effective protection depends on practical recognition, institutional coordination, early response, accessibility and sustained follow-up, so that rights-defending activity remains viable in practice.
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Climate justice and neocolonialism in a digital world: how the digital economy perpetuates climate harm and colonial disparities between the Global South and the Global North
(2026) Magaliou, Sofia; Maubernard, Christophe
Contemporary realities are underpinned by interwoven crises, with the climate crisis and the challenges posed by the modern digital economy occupying a prominent place. Once again in human history, certain parts of the world bear the brunt of the development and prosperity of the rest. The Global North is insatiably exploiting the resources and capacities of the Global South, replicating and perpetuating patterns reminiscent of the colonial era, while reshaping them into neocolonial configurations. First, through palpable cases of raw material extraction, serving the manufacture of electronic devices and sustaining the operation of vast digital infrastructures, land appropriation, primarily through e-waste dumping, and data extraction and domination, this thesis seeks to delineate the contextual framework within which digital capitalism unfolds. Second, by examining key international legal instruments on climate protection and corporate due diligence, it aims to illustrate the multiple structural deficiencies of the existing legal architecture – one that could, but fails to, provide an avenue for addressing the climate and human costs of the digital economy’s hidden and manifest externalities. Third, this thesis suggests climate justice as a concept of utmost relevance, with genuine potential to bridge the structural disparities between the Global South and the Global North, serving as a justice-oriented framework that envisions holistic societal transformation and uproots all capitalist and (neo)colonial drivers of climate and human harm.
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Securitization practices in German migration law and policy. The impact on Iraqi Yazidis and Russian nationals communities
(2026) Luccioli, Chiara; Kotzur, Markus
This research thesis analyses the process of securitization of migration in Germany, whether it operates uniformly across the groups it affects, or whether it is implemented in different mechanisms and has then different consequences, depending on the community involved. Drawing on securitization theory, the study puts Germany’s migration governance inside the legal framework of the European Union and of International Human Rights Law, before introducing two original case studies: citizens of the Russian Federation residing in Munich, subject to mandatory security interviews since 2025, and the Iraqi Yazidis, whose 2014 genocide formally recognised by Germany in 2023, and yet continue to face incumbent threats of deportations. Combining semi-structured interviews, original anonymous surveys and analysis of primary legal sources and secondary academic literature, the research finds that the two communities experience securitization through different logics: for Russian nationals is a preventive, administrative one, while for Yazidis it occurs through the enforcement measure of deportations and through the bureaucratic process of protection withdrawal, occurring despite the state’s own public humanitarian recognition of the genocide. These findings suggest that securitization practices in Germany are not a single, unified set of measures, but distinct administrative and enforcement logics, with implementation effects that often vary, depending on a community’s legal status, their political position at the international level and how that community is discussed publicly in Germany. Finally, the research concludes with some practical recommendations concerning procedural transparency, judicial safeguards and consistent humanitarian protection, and acknowledging the limitations of its small-sample empirical design and suggestions for future research in this domain.
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Is the needle mightier than the sword? Reframing women's craft as political agency in conflict zones
(2026) Léo Fé, Maria; Finlay, Graham
Historically associated with domesticity, femininity and care, embroidery has rarely been recognised as a form of political action. This thesis argues, however, that women’s textile practices can constitute significant forms of human rights advocacy, particularly where access to public speech, formal employment and collective organisation is restricted. Centred on the question of the conditions under which women’s textile practices can constitute forms of human rights advocacy, the study develops the concept of craft-based human rights advocacy to describe practices that communicate harm, preserve threatened knowledge, sustain collective capacity and assert claims to dignity and recognition. Adopting a qualitative comparative case study approach, the thesis examines three distinct textile traditions. Chilean arpilleras transformed fabric scraps into visual testimonies of disappearance, repression and economic deprivation under the Pinochet dictatorship. Afghan khamak preserves technical knowledge, social relationships and limited economic possibilities under conditions of severe restrictions on women’s education, employment, mobility and public participation. Palestinian tatreez functions as a portable archive of memory, identity and relationships with place across displacement and diaspora. The analysis considers five interconnected dimensions: textiles as testimony and archive, craft as labour and economic survival, mediation by institutions and markets, international and digital circulation, and the structural limitations of craft as a political practice. Bringing feminist craft scholarship into dialogue with memory studies, feminist economics and cultural rights, the thesis demonstrates that the political significance of embroidery does not reside in the stitch alone, but in the relationships of production, meaning and circulation that surround it. It concludes that craft cannot replace legal or structural transformation, but can give material endurance to experiences, identities and memories that political power attempts to silence.