European Court of Human Rights building

Research Lab at University College London

Not everyone can reach human rights justice.

We are an interdisciplinary team of scholars and practitioners studying international human rights courts and tribunals — who gets heard, what remedies follow, and whether states change their behaviour.

Led by Professor Veronika Fikfak, Professor of Human Rights and International Law at University College London.

1 million

Claims and judgments analysed

4

International and regional human rights systems

~100

States under study

50+

Publications by our team

Two questions we are asking

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Access to Justice / Break the Bias
01

Access to Justice / Break the Bias

This ERC-funded project looks at how victims access international human rights courts and treaty bodies. We study inequality in access to understand which groups obtain protection and which fall through the cracks.

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Compliance and Remedies / Human Rights Nudge
02

Compliance and Remedies / Human Rights Nudge

This ERC-funded project studies execution of human rights judgments across the Council of Europe. We look at past cases of human rights violations to understand when judicial decisions lead to a change in states' behaviour.

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What we are finding

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Admissibility decides more than merits

A large share of claims never reaches a substantive hearing. Admissibility criteria filter out precisely the claimants the system says it protects.

States learn from each other

Compliance is not only a bilateral matter between a court and a state. Governments observe how their peers respond to adverse judgments and calibrate accordingly.

Remedies shape behaviour

Damages alone rarely produce reform. The design of the remedy — individual, general, or community-wide — predicts whether a violation recurs.

Recent publications

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