A presentation by Frans Viljoen (University of Pretoria). This event is part of the Fundamental Rights Research Colloquium hosted by the Centre for Fundamental Rights
With the assistance of country-based researchers, Heyns and Viljoenconducted a study to track and better understand the impact of the ‘core UN human rights treaties’ in 20 selected UN member states up to 30 June 1999. In 2019, they embarked on a study to update the initial study, by covering the 20-year period between 1 July 1999 and 30 June 2019. With a few exceptions, the territorial focus of the 2019 study is the same as that of the 1999 study. They were joined by Rachel Murray as co-study leader. The country studies were all but completed when Christof Heyns so unexpectedly, untimely and sadly passed away on 28 March 2021. The work is now being brought to finality. Many changes that are pertinent to the effectiveness of ‘core UN human rights treaties’ have occurred in the 20 years between 1999 and 2019. Against the background of and accounting for these changes, and juxtaposing results from the 1999 and 2019 studies, the presentation aims to track and better understand aspects of the impact of these treaties at the domestic level.
This presentation is part of the Fundamental Rights Research Colloquium's cluster on 'Effectiveness of Human Rights'. This series of the Centre for Fundamental Rights colloquium brings together scholars across disciplines at various career stages to present important new scholarship on the effectiveness of human rights norms and institutions, examining a variety of international human rights and international criminal law norms, their public support and institutional impact across diverse sites and levels.
Frans Viljoen is Professor of International Human Rights Law at the University of Pretoria. Since 2007 he has been the Director of the University’s Centre for Human Rights, which is both an academic department and a think tank, research and advocacy centre. Viljoen's main area of research is regional human rights protection, with particular attention to the African Union human rights standards, institutions and processes, within their socio-economic and political context. He is the author of a widely-cited text on the African human rights system, International human rights law in Africa. Together with Professors Basak Çalı, and Mikael Madsen, he edited an issue of the International Journal of Constitutional Law on comparative regional human rights regimes. Frans Viljoen was the founding editor in 2000, and has since then served as editor-in-chief of the leading journal on human rights in Africa, the African Human Rights Law Journal, and since 2017 served as convening editor of the African Human Rights Yearbook. He has served as visiting professor on the African human rights system at universities across the world. In 2019, he was elected as a Deputy Chairperson of the Global Campus of Human Rights, an institution bringing together seven Master’s programmes from across the globe in the fields of human rights and democratisation.
Prior registration is required. Registered attendees will receive the dial-in details as well as a draft paper, on which the presentation is based, via e-mail prior to the event.
