SIM Research

A multi-year research project (2017-2022) concerning local authorities, international law and the rights of refugees in Europe, with its base in Middelburg, this project, funded by a Netherlands Organization of Scientific Research Vici grant, was carried out by Prof. dr. Barbara Oomen, a post-doctoral researcher and three PhD students. The researchers worked from Utrecht University, but were based at University College Roosevelt. Below follows a project description.

Point of departure for this research is that the refugee crisis poses a major challenge for Europe in which local governments can potentially play a key role. ‘Where states provide asylum, cities provide shelter’. Cities, however, show strikingly different responses, from emphasizing via tweets and in practice how #citieswelcomerefugees to overtly shunning the people concerned.

In response to this, Cities of Refuge explores and explicates the relevance of international human rights, as law, praxis and discourse, to how local governments in Europe welcome and integrate refugees. This is urgent, as human rights can theoretically provide legal clarity on local government responsibilities, practical standards and a discursive frame but are not always invoked.

It is also innovative. First, because it concerns the explicit recognition of local governments as human rights actors in a multilevel context. Next, Cities of Refuge combines law, sociology and anthropology to develop a novel localized understanding of human rights. This theory will:

1. Contribute to a sustainable long-term, localized solution of the refugee crisis;
2. Strengthen human rights law with new, empirically grounded, insights.

The localized understanding of human rights will be developed via a three-stepped approach:

1. A legal analysis;
2. The development of local-level human rights indicators on the freedom of movement, participation, education and work;
3. Grounded, explorative empirical analysis in ‘cities of refuge’/’cities that refuse’ on the (lack of) relevance of human rights for refugee welcome and integration in 6 countries and 4 cities per country.

In all, Cities of Refuge will explicate legal obligations and explore local practices. In doing so, it hopes to add insight into the potential role of human rights in addressing one of the largest challenges of our times.

Project description at NWO website (projecten/453-16-001-0):

Cities of refuge: local governments and the human rights of refugees in Europe

The refugee crisis poses a major challenge for Europe, in which local governments can play a key role. â??Where states provide asylum, cities provide shelterâ??. Cities, however, show strikingly different responses, from emphasizing how #citieswelcomerefugees to overtly shunning them. This is why Cities of Refuge explores and explicates the relevance of international human rights, as law, praxis and discourse, to how local governments in Europe welcome and integrate refugees. This is urgent, as human rights can theoretically provide legal clarity on local government responsibilities, practical standards and a discursive frame for refugee welcome and integration. The innovation here is twofold. It first concerns explicit recognition of local governments as human rights actors in a multi-level context. Next, Cities of Refuge combines law, sociology and anthropology to develop a novel localized understanding of human rights. This will: 1) Contribute to a sustainable long-term, localized solution of the refugee crisis 2) Strengthen human rights law with new, empirically grounded, insights The legal analysis will yield much-needed clarity on local governments as human rights duty bearers. It forms the basis for the assessment of local praxis via specific human rights indicators. The empirical analysis will subsequently employ a multilevel sampling design of 6 countries and 4 cities that are either overtly welcoming or hostile. This design enables assessment of the impact of structural factors, like EU membership, local autonomy, border status and city size next to exploration of discourse. Stakeholders are involved throughout the research, amongst others via an interactive map that enables crowd research. In all, Cities of Refuge will explicate legal obligations and explore local practices. What is to be gained, in the end, is insight into the potential role of human rights in addressing one of the largest challenges of our times.

Dossiernummer: 453-16-001

Source: Cities of refuge: local governments and the human rights of refugees in Europe | NWO 

Towards a new human rights framework addressing violence against trans and intersex persons 

Trans and intersex persons face severe harassment and violence in all regions of the world. However, the human rights frameworks on gender-based violence, which focus on women, pay limited attention to such cases. This project explores these norms, explains their shortcomings and proposes ways in which these can be improved. It is funded by NWO (The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research), more information can be found at the NWO website.

Main researcher: dr. Loreena Sosa

Project description at NWO website 

Proud and Safe: Towards a new human rights framework addressing violence against trans and intersex persons

Trans persons, whose gender identity differs from the sex assigned to them at birth, face frequent harassment and violence in all regions of the world, often forcing them to hide their true selves. Similarly, intersex individuals, born with sex characteristics that differ from typical notions of male or female bodies, are often stigmatized and subjected to multiple human rights violations, including their right to health, physical integrity, and to be free from torture. Human rights bodies, however, show no agreement on how to legally define violence against trans and intersex persons (T/I), labelling it sometimes as "hate crimes", "transphobiaâ? or â??violence based on prejudiceâ?, and even less agreement on which set of norms best to apply. In essence, violence against individuals who challenge traditional gender norms and expectations, such as T/I, constitutes gender-based violence (GBV), yet so far, it has been rarely connected to the GBV frameworks. Issues related to T/I are often addressed as Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) issues, creating a separate pathway. This is problematic since human rights norms on GBV offer a ready-for-use and sophisticated system of protection, currently available only to women. This research examines existing human rights law on violence against T/I, explores the potential of the GBV frameworks and explains their shortcomings. By examining the applicable norms in light of the experiences of T/I, civil society representatives and public officials dealing with cases of violence, it proposes ways to improve them. It will suggest good practices on how to address violence against T/I while challenging stereotypes of sex, sexuality and gender differences. This innovative proposal â??connectsâ?? two paradigms that now run parallel, GBV and SOGI, and offers a comprehensive approach to GBV, examining the multiple forms of discrimination affecting T/I and exploring how gender, sexual orientation and gender identity interconnect.

Dossiernummer
016.Veni.195.218

Looptijd: 1 februari 2019 tot 26 mei 2023

Source: Cities of refuge: local governments and the human rights of refugees in Europe | NWO

Gender Identity Registration and Human Rights Effects

GIRARE is an interdisciplinary research project that involved Utrecht University researchers from SIM / UCERF (Marjolein van den Brink) and Humanities / Gender Studies (Christine Quinan). The project explored the effects of global changes in (primarily) government practices regarding the attribution and registration of legal sex/gender on people’s well-being, in terms of human rights.

In the initial stages of the project, two sub-projects were carried out. GIRARE Local focused on Dutch initiatives at municipal level to change practices of collecting and disseminating information on the sex/gender identity of individuals. GIRARE Travel explored how changes in state practices regarding sex-entries in travel documents affect the mobility of individuals, especially but not exclusively LGBTI persons.

The first phase of this project was carried out with financial support of Institutions, one of Utrecht University’s strategic research themes. Read more about the Girare expert seminar that took place on 21 October 2016.

Special issue of the International Journal of Gender, Sexuality and Law

In 2020, a special issue of the International Journal of Gender, Sexuality and Law was published (co-edited by Marjolein van den Brink) that drew upon a variety of disciplines, including law, gender studies, trans studies, queer theory, legal and political sociology, and sociology of the body. This special issue was themed "Bodies, identities, and gender regimes: Human rights and legal aspects of gender identity registration." 

Main researcher

dr. Marjolein van den Brink

In many countries civil society is to be under pressure. Collective citizens' efforts, especially when they have political salience, seem to be regarded with increasing suspicion and even to be actively countered in many states. Anti-NGO laws, arbitrary inspections and even harassment and criminalization all strike at the roots of civic space.

Is this part of a trend of "reverse transitions", in which countries slide away from democracy? Or is this maybe a wider trend, of which reflections can also be observed in more established democracies? What are the possible causes of this shrinking or closing civic space, how does the closing manifest itself, and what are the linkages to human rights?

This research project will focus on anti-NGO measures, particularly in Europe (but as part of a broader global trend). The project will also encompass media freedom and public protest as two areas in which the same shrinking space phenomenon can be observed.

Main researcher

prof. dr. Antoine Buyse

For this project, researchers have investigated the role of human rights in the internal and external policies of the European Union.

You can find more information on the FRAME website.

The TJDI project focuses on countries facing a myriad of challenges following their emergence from authoritarian rule and/or violent conflict. Chief among these problems is the demand for accountability for past abuses, and the need to build a new, stable democratic state. Scholars and practitioners continue to debate which of these take priority, or whether in fact one is a necessary precondition for the other. While some recent scholarship suggests that certain transitional justice measures are positively correlated with an improvement in the state of democracy and human rights in transitional states, other scholarship suggests that some transitional justice measures are not linked to improved records of democracy and human rights.

This three-year, inter-disciplinary research project will be conducted by researchers at the University of East London, UK, and at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and will examine the experiences of eight countries: South Korea, Japan, Brazil, Chile, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Hungary, and East Germany, in four regions. All of these countries have experienced different types of violence and repression and undergone different types of transition, in different regional and international geopolitical circumstances. Using qualitative methods including field research, secondary research, and incorporating insights from quantitative research, this comparative project will develop new insights regarding the impact of transitional justice measures specifically on democratic institution-building. The researchers aim at contributing to the wide scholarship on the effects of transitional justice and providing insights to practitioners regarding the role of various transitional justice measures.

Fore more information, see tjdi.org.

In the research project Words of Violence, Antoine Buyse investigates the interlinkages between freedom of expression, the media and violent conflict escalation.

The multidisciplinary project combines legal research with insights from conflict studies. Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo are the two case studies under review. This project is funded by a Veni talent grant from NWO, the Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research.

The H2020 project ETHOS researched an empirically funded European theory about justice.

Prof B. Oomen, Dr A. Timmer, Dr. L. Henderson

Throughout the entire ‘lifeline’ of medicines, problems arise which raise multidisciplinary questions, including from a human rights perspective.

Dr Brianne McGonigle

Read more about this research project.