Questions concerning effective remedies in refugee status procedures have recently received a lot of attention in Belgium, most notably in two significant high-level cases. The Belgian Constitutional Court found in January 2014 that the fast-track procedure of annulment for asylum seekers from safe countries of origin did not provide for an effective remedy. Only one month later the European Court of Human Rights reached a similar conclusion in the S. J. v. Belgium case, which concerned the (...)

The article concerns the importation by the European Court of Human Rights of numerous and various external documents to help apply and interpret the European Convention on Human Rights and the Protocols thereto. To address this phenomenon, this article starts from and reflects upon a users’ perspective on human rights. Dorothea Staes demonstrates that, depending on the particular judicial motives, tendencies towards both integration and opposition result from references to external (...)

Adopting a ‘user perspective’ might open promising new avenues to human rights research, especially in a context of global legal pluralism that is characterized by a multiplicity of actors. This article evaluates the conceptual value of the approach by confronting it with three forceful objections to the notions of human rights ‘users’ and ‘usage’ as they emerge from the social sciences, in particular from sociology. These include the ‘Arendtian’ argument concerning the problem of the ‘right to (...)

BRIBOSIA Emmanuelle, GANTY Sarah, “Arrêt ‘Dogan’ : Quelle légalité pour les tests d’intégration civique ?”, Journal de droit européen, 2014, n°213, 378 - 380

“Same-Sex Marriage : Building an Argument Before the European Court of Human Rights in Light of the US Experience” (avec E. Bribosia & L. Van den Eynde), 32 Berkeley J. Int’l Law. 1. (2014)
In 2013, Same-sex marriage was under the spotlights on both sides of the Atlantic. While in Europe, heated debates took place before the French and the British parliaments, the U.S. Supreme Court made two landmark rulings. In the Council of Europe, only 10 of the 47 Member States have so far opened (...)

“Les signes religieux au cœur d’un bras de fer : la saga Singh” (avec E. Bribosia & G. Caceres), Revue trimestrielle des droits de l’homme, 2014, pp. 495-514
Avec les constatations du Comité des droits de l’homme dans l’affaire Shingara Mann Singh contre France du 19 juillet 2013, l’histoire se répète. La fracture entre la jurisprudence de ce Comité et celle de la Cour européenne des droits de l’homme relative aux restrictions du port de signes religieux continue-t-elle de se creuser ? La mise en (...)

“Insider Perspectives and the Human Rights Debate on Face Veil Bans” (avec E. Bribosia), in E. Brems (dir.), The Experiences of Face Veil Wearers in Europe and the Law, coll. Cambridge Studies in Law and Society, Cambridge University Press, 2014, p. 163-183.
The ‘burqa bans’ adopted in Belgium and France and contemplated elsewhere in Europe, have mobilized human rights activists andscholars, who are nearly unanimous in accusing governments and public authorities banning face veiling of (...)

A striking development in human rights implementation over the past decades has been the rise of human rights cities. This contribution defines a human rights city as an urban entity or local government that explicitly bases its policies, or some of them, on human rights as laid down in international treaties, and thus distinguishes itself from other local authorities. It theorizes the background to this process and offers a typology of human rights cities. Some initiatives, for instance, (...)

The Parliament of Kosovo passed a controversial amnesty law in July 2013 within the context of the Brussels-led negotiations between Serbia and Kosovo. This article evaluates the law using a functional framework, thus exploring possible implications with regard to legality, the rule of law, security, the economy, and reconciliation. We find that the amnesty law entails serious problems or risks in each aspect except legality due to its broad scope which includes common and economic crimes (...)

Policy on migration in Europe bears more relationship to ideology than evidence. And humanity is sorely lacking. There is no getting around the need for a new European policy based on the principle of solidarity.