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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- The Global Campus Human Rights Journal is a peer-reviewed bi-annual publication that serves as a forum for rigorous scholarly analysis, critical commentaries, and reports on recent developments pertaining to human rights and democratisation globally.
- Publications series about various projects developed by Global Campus of Human Rights.
- A selection of the best master theses of each regional programme (annual award) as well as the full collection of all dissertations.
- This collection includes the Global Campus of Human Rights Annual Report and specific activities reporting.
- The Global Campus of Human Rights Magazine is a quarterly promotional publication on the network activities. It is published both in English and Italian.
Recent Submissions
EU foreign policy: double standards and the price of strategic dependence on the US
(Global Campus of Human Rights, 2026-09-24) Passuello, Chiara
Given ongoing EU failure to condemn outright not only Israel’s genocide in Gaza and invasion of Lebanon but US aggression against Iran, this blog calls for the self-styled global champion of human rights to take an independent stand against the whims of Washington’s foreign policy.
Quid cuestodiet ipsos custodes? A study about the independent police complaints bodies across EU member states and his compliance with the European standards
(2026) Zapata Vargas, Leonardo; Castell, Thomas
This study examines the commitment of European Union Member States to European human rights standards regarding the design and implementation of Independent Police Complaint Bodies (IPCB). Based on the 2009 Opinion of the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, this research uses a mixed-methods legal approach to analyze and codify the legal and regulatory frameworks of IPCBs in 26 EU Member States. Applying a standardized tool, a score is generated to evaluate the independent bodies, based on 32 coding items divided into seven categories: a) institutional independence, b) visibility, c) notification, d) mediation, e) investigation, f) victim participation, and g) decision-making and appeals capacity.
The quantitative results reveal a sample mean score of 1.77 on a scale of 3, indicating moderate alignment with international recommendations. While formal institutional independence (2.28) and public access (2.53) receive high marks, shortcomings exist regarding the independence of investigative bodies (1.73), support for victims (1.00), and the capacity to impose binding disciplinary sanctions (1.23). Furthermore, a disparity is observed between different types of bodies: general mechanisms (ombudsman) exhibit greater structural independence but less investigative capacity compared to specific oversight agencies. Ultimately, this index serves as an empirical guide for improving democratic oversight and strengthening the protection of human rights in European Union countries.
“If pain could speak" through the cinematic lens: structural violence and children’s lived realities in Capernaum
(2026) Yammine, Rita; Kočan, Faris
Children’s rights violations are often rendered invisible precisely because they occur not through dramatic acts of violence, but through the slow accumulation of ordinary social, legal, and institutional failures. This thesis examines how Capernaum (Labaki, 2018), a Lebanese film following Zain, a child without legal documentation, cinematically constructs the gap between children’s rights in law and children’s lived realities as a form of structural violence. The central research question asks: how does Capernaum cinematically construct this gap as structural violence, and through which cinematic techniques does it make that gap visible, affective, and recognisable to the viewer?
The thesis develops an original analytical framework by bringing together three mutually reinforcing fields: structural violence theory, drawing on Galtung and Kent; the Convention on the Rights of the Child as a normative benchmark; and human rights cinema scholarship, drawing on Nash, Shapiro, Kozloff, Lebeau, and Hemelryk Donald. Through close reading of seven selected scenes, the thesis examines how the film constructs legal invisibility, educational exclusion, child labour, child marriage, parentification, delayed voice, and belated recognition as a connected chain of rights denial rather than a series of isolated events.
The findings show that Capernaum does not simply represent children’s suffering. It cinematically constructs a world in which children become visible to institutions only when they are criminalised, publicly exposed, or already harmed beyond repair. Structural violence operates here not through one perpetrator or one act, but through the normalisation of conditions that make childhood impossible as a protected condition for the children living inside them.
The thesis contributes to children’s rights scholarship by showing that legal entitlements must be studied as lived conditions, not only as formal protections. It contributes to structural violence theory by demonstrating that childhood intensifies the meaning of indirect harm in ways Galtung’s original framework does not fully address. It contributes to human rights cinema scholarship by demonstrating that close cinematic reading is itself a method for producing human rights knowledge, accessing forms of evidence that legal and sociological analysis alone cannot reach. Together, these contributions show that cinema is not a secondary tool for studying human rights, but a critical site where the gap between legal promise and lived reality becomes visible, affective, and politically legible.
How division is created through the politics of memory. A narrative analysis of Nigel Farage and Reform UK
(2026) Whitehouse, Ronnie; Hedžet, Ajda
Reform UK are currently the most popular party in the UK. They have risen up the polls largely by presenting themselves as a radical alternative, the true voice of the people, and a populist party that can change things for the better. This thesis will show that these ideals are thinly veiled by an ethnonationalist ideal, and the intentional comments made by the party create a narrative that provides victimhood for the ingroup (white Britons) whilst consistently demonising the outgroup (largely immigrants). Nigel Farage, the leader of reform, and other major figures in the party, generally place these narratives after comments about equality, and non-discrimination, in an attempt to be seen as more pleasing to the general public, but an analysis of these things in totality, through the politics of memory, highlight the real narrative, one of divisiveness, and attacks purely on the outgroup. This thesis will be split into two sections, comments made in Parliament, and comments made outside of Parliament. Every comment made by Nigel Farage (the leader of Reform) since his election as an MP for Clacton in 2024 will be analysed through the lens of memory politics, highlighting consistent attacks on the outgroup through narrativity, using colonial aphasia, prosthetic memory, and nostalgic nationalism (as well as touching on other concepts briefly, but only to make a larger point). The second section is more broad, and looks at the most well-known speeches and comments made outside of Parliament, as well as Reform’s manifesto for the 2024 General Election. This section will highlight that all of these comments, and the manifesto itself, are framed in a way to insight division, create a narrative that the ingroup is being constantly attacked, and that this is the fault of the outgroup, also being done through narrativity linked to colonial aphasia, prosthetic memory, and nostalgic nationalism.
Naming the violence. The role of law and legal reasoning in the repression of the Palestine-solidarity movement in Berlin since October 2023
(2026) Weiser, Sophia; Baroš, Jiří
Since October 2023 Berlin authorities have responded to protest and expressions of solidarity with Palestine with extensive restrictions. These measures are often implemented through legal instruments, particularly in the fields of criminal law, assembly law and immigration law. This thesis examines the role of law and legal reasoning in the repression of the pro-Palestinian movement in Berlin. For this, it draws on a theoretical framework constructed around Walter Benjamin, Judith Butler and Robert Cover, who critically engage with legal violence and its obscuring function. The analysis considers the case as situated within the context of German Staatsräson, understood as a political commitment to Israel that enters the legal discourse at the constitutional boundaries and operates through the conflation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism. It analyzes a corpus of publicly accessible court rulings from the Berlin case-law database, to understand the mechanisms underlying the doctrinal construction.
The findings show that legal reasoning in administrative decisions restricting Palestine-solidarity in many cases translate contested political meaning into security-relevant danger through doctrinal constructions and prospective assessments, thereby authorizing state intervention. Judicial review sometimes disciplines these measures, e.g. by correcting weak prognoses or disproportionality, but it does not fully address the deeper classificatory premises and thus leaves the underlying framing of danger intact for future cases.