The African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights has in recent years experienced significant backlash from African Union member governments, with five states withdrawing permission for their citizens to submit cases to the Court since 2016 (including Tanzania, where the Court is located). This study explores how the Court’s remedial mandates have evolved during this period of crisis for the young Court. I find that the scope of the Court’s remedial mandates has actually expanded in recent years, suggesting that Court judges are not inclined to entice government cooperation by walking back the uniquely holistic and intensive remedial approach that the Court has forged. Relative to scholarship on other regional human rights courts, the ACtHPR’s remedial jurisprudence is severely understudied. This analysis contributes to correcting that imbalance by employing a novel typology to trace the development of the Court’s remedial mandates throughout the institution’s history.

A significant move toward advancing the right to development (RtD) occurred in 2018, when the Human Rights Council called for drafting a legally binding treaty on the RtD. Despite the substantial progress made by the UN Working Group since then, this right remains undertheorized and continues to be contested on various grounds. As we embark on a treaty, the urgent challenge lies in clarifying the concept of the RtD. Drawing on the need, interest, and capability (NIC) theory of rights and the two key documents of the 1986 Declaration on the Right to Development and 2023 Draft International Covenant on the Right to Development, this article puts forward a new theoretical model for the RtD in order to serve four main purposes: first, to illuminate that well-being, as the outcome of development, does not refer to individual well-being—which can leave the right with unlimited scope and at the risk of losing its meaning by becoming a right to everything—but, rather, to collective well-being; second, to illustrate that the RtD is a human right to an enabling environment for improving the well-being of the whole population and individuals as a member of a group; third, to explore the nature of the RtD as a collective right held jointly by individuals; and fourth, to uncover the six key constituent components of the RtD as a composite right.

Traditionally a state-centric regime, international human rights law (IHRL) has not quite caught up with the global trend whereby cities are increasingly engaging with international human rights norms. Normative gaps in IHRL prevail in conceptualizing the complementary roles of local governments in undertaking human rights obligations and the concurrent human rights responsibilities of non-state actors. This article contributes to addressing these normative gaps by outlining a research agenda in relation to the right to food that connects the currently siloed bodies of scholarship on IHRL and urban food governance (UFG). Proliferating in cities across the world over the last two decades, UFG initiatives aim at bringing together stakeholders across different sectors to tackle food-related problems. This article argues that their place-based nature and multi-actor governance model render UFG initiatives rich case studies for contextualizing and conceptualizing the nature and scope of local governments’ obligations and non-state actors’ responsibilities under IHRL. Importantly, the article proposes a research framework underpinned by a human rights localization perspective to foster interaction between IHRL and UFG scholarship to inform the normative development of the notions of complementary obligations and concurrent responsibilities under IHRL in a way that responds to empirical realities in urban governance.

The adoption of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights has marked a global shift toward holding corporations accountable for human rights violations. Yet, in Southeast Asia, the regional implementation of these norms remains limited. Despite ASEAN’s rhetorical support for human rights, its economic integration agenda led by the ASEAN Economic Community has largely excluded binding human rights obligations. This gap raises a central question: Why has ASEAN failed to embed business and human rights norms into its regional economic governance? This article argues that ASEAN’s fragmented approach is driven by the political economy of its member states, in which economic growth and market liberalization are prioritized over human rights enforcement. Institutional commitments to sovereignty, noninterference, and consensus further entrench this dynamic by shielding powerful business sectors from scrutiny. Drawing on a structural analysis of ASEAN’s institutional design and member state interests, the study explains the region’s persistent accountability gaps. It contributes to debates on regional human rights governance by showing how economic imperatives and elite interests continue to undermine efforts to institutionalize the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights in Southeast Asia.

This article interrogates the concept of extraterritorial ecocide as a form of epistemic injustice, arguing that transboundary environmental harm not only devastates ecosystems but also annihilates the knowledge systems of the communities that depend on them. It introduces the notion of environmental sovereignty, the collective right of communities to sustain the ecological and epistemic conditions necessary for self-determination, and defines epistemicide as the systematic destruction of community-based knowledge systems through ecological disruption. By bridging doctrines of international environmental law, human rights, and decolonial epistemology, the article advances a framework for recognizing epistemic harm as a distinct category of injury under international law. Drawing on jurisprudence from Teitiota v. New Zealand, Saramaka, Endorois, and Sarayaku, it demonstrates that violations of free, prior, and informed consent often entail epistemic destruction, including the loss of ecological indicators, rituals, and linguistic taxonomies. The article proposes two complementary mechanisms to address these harms: a global tribunal for environmental sovereignty and epistemic justice and the integration of epistemic impact assessments (EIA[E]) into existing loss and damage frameworks. These mechanisms extend accountability beyond state-centric liability toward a pluralistic model that values both ecological and epistemic restoration. By foregrounding the right to environmental sovereignty, the study offers an actionable path to operationalize epistemic justice within international law and to restore the cognitive foundations that enable communities to live with dignity amid environmental collapse.

Repression against human rights defenders has escalated globally, becoming increasingly dangerous over the last decade. Their human rights advocacy work and the information they wield about abuses by those in power put these defenders at mortal risk. We review what research tells us about where and why defenders are targeted and killed, and discuss why better data can give us more nuanced insights about these assassinations. We describe our new dataset, which contains disaggregated and geocoded event data for each of the 2,877 reported targeted killings of human rights defenders globally from 2014 to 2023, as well as aggregated country-year data on the number of defenders killed, total and by issue type. We examine the data, revealing new insights about where, when, why, and by whom human rights defenders are killed. We also discuss the reliability and validity of the data; how the data enables more research in this crucial area; and how it provides a resource that may be useful beyond researchers, to advocates and policymakers in their work to accurately document, advocate for protections for, and reduce impunity for those who threaten the actors on the front lines of the defense of human rights.

Despite its focus on politically underrepresented groups, the representation literature has excluded persons (e.g., those with cognitive disabilities and severe somatic diseases) who temporarily or permanently cannot make political claims and represent themselves independently. I conceptualize these persons as dependent claim makers and argue that their inclusion in the literature is vital for understanding how citizens can have their interests attended to in all phases and variations of life. I propose and specify a theoretical framework for understanding dependent claim makers’ (lack of) substantive democratic representation, focusing on public policymaking processes. Building on unique interviews with civil servants and a minister in charge of creating a new governmental policy on the human rights of persons with intellectual disabilities in Norway and my own participation in this process, I suggest how representation can take place by emphasizing policymakers’ identification with the underrepresented group and knowledge on group-specific operationalizations of general policy goals, and by implementing mandatory accountability mechanisms.

This article critically considers the prominent “ending statelessness” framing within global statelessness work to expose potential risks around such dominant approaches—both for advocacy efficacy and discursively (primarily for those directly impacted by the issue: i.e., stateless individuals). In probing the focus on “eradication” framing, the article focuses on the IBelong campaign launched by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to end statelessness in a decade (2014–2024). Drawing comparatively from lessons learned from other global initiatives seeking to end a perceived global ill (specifically 2005’s Make Poverty History and the UN target to End AIDS by 2030), I question whether the eradication framing is, in fact, the most effective way to address statelessness, while considering the—sometimes negative—implications this can have for people with lived experience of statelessness. Reflection on the discursive implications of such framing should complement more programmatic considerations given to the IBelong campaign within existing evaluations. This analysis is timely given that, following the end of IBelong campaign’s implementation period, the next phase within the ending statelessness endeavor is already under way. Although ending statelessness is undoubtedly desirable for (most, if not all) people affected by it, alternative framing approaches more sensitive to, and privileging, the insights and experiences of such individuals may provide a basis to recalibrate ongoing efforts to address statelessness worldwide, and ultimately better serve their interests.

We examine the intricate tradeoffs between human rights protections and security imperatives in Burkina Faso’s counterterrorism strategy, with a focus on the deployment of the Volontaires pour la Défense de la Patrie (VDPs). The research was guided by securitization theory and employed a qualitative design involving 50 participants from affected communities and security stakeholders. The study answered two key questions. First, how does deploying civilian forces in Burkina Faso’s counterterrorism strategy influence the balance between human rights protections and security imperatives? Second, what do these dynamics reveal about the legal, ethical, and practical gaps in their deployment? The data were analyzed thematically using Braun and Clarke’s structured approach. Findings reveal that, although VDPs were intended to support overstretched state forces, their operations have led to human rights violations, including ethnic profiling and extrajudicial actions. We argue that, these outcomes are rooted in legal ambiguity, weak accountability mechanisms, and operational inefficiencies, reflecting broader governance failures rather than isolated misconduct. We emphasize the urgency of strengthening legal frameworks, extending training duration, and establishing independent oversight bodies to realign VDP operations with human rights standards. The study contributes to a growing body of evidence challenging overly militarized approaches to counterterrorism in fragile contexts. The paper contributes to SDG 16 by analysing the human rights and security implications of civilian participation in counterterrorism in Burkina Fas.

Autocracies, like democracies, use reservations to adjust their treaty commitments. But autocracies receive far greater pressure to withdraw reservations. To what extent is this pressure effective? We show through statistical analyses and case illustrations that autocracies respond to international pressure differently than democracies. Autocracies are more likely to withdraw reservations when facing treaty body reviews and less likely to withdraw reservations in response to peer state objections. We propose explanations for this difference. Autocracies may be more responsive to periodic reviews because they are conducted by technical experts from diverse countries, regions, and political regimes, rather than by states’ political representatives. Periodic review is an iterative process that gives autocracies time to address domestic opposition to withdrawing reservations. Yet, autocracies may be less likely to withdraw reservations in response to state objections because they see objections, which primarily originate with Western democracies, as biased, hypocritical, and possibly even neocolonial. Objections are also only filed once and may not have the sustained impact necessary to prompt reservation withdrawal. Our research improves scholarly understanding of autocratic states’ engagement with international law and international organizations, and reveals the conditional effects of the international community’s efforts to change state behavior within treaty regimes.