UKRI / ERC Consolidator Grant
BREAKtheBIAS: For Equal Access to Human Rights Justice
The project seeks to address one of the most challenging problems in the international human rights system: unequal access to human rights justice.
Read our access to justice publications →The project looks at the outcomes of thousands of international, regional, and domestic human rights cases and identifies who is able to turn to human rights bodies and which individuals and groups are unsuccessful in making their claims.
By identifying barriers that restrict access and examining the role of international lawyers in the process, the project makes a significant advance in the study of inequities in international law.
The aim is to understand the cause of access disparities – whether these be due to implicit, geographical, or structural legal bias – so that legal processes and existing structures can be redesigned to ensure equal access to human rights justice for everyone.
A specific aspect of the project, and of Veronika's related work, is to understand what impact new technologies and automation play in the context of human rights and access to justice.
Alongside the main project
Ongoing strand
We study how automation is increasingly used by international courts and tribunals, the permissibility of that use, and the accountability owed to human rights victims when decisions about their claims are shaped by technology.
UCL Grand Challenges
The project investigates the barriers children face when seeking climate justice through international legal systems. Despite high-profile cases—such as the 2019 UN complaint against five states and the 2024 European Court of Human Rights case involving 33 countries—children's claims have been dismissed on admissibility grounds. These decisions expose systemic flaws in international justice mechanisms, which apply adult-centric criteria to child-led actions. Focusing on 200 submissions to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (2014–2024), the project will analyse how admissibility standards are applied and whether they reflect children's rights and capacities.