Human Rights Centre (HRC)

Description

The Human Rights Centre at Queen’s University, Belfast (HRC) was established to provide a focus for research and education on human rights. The goal of the Centre, originally given the unwieldy title of ‘Centre for Comparative and International Human Rights Law’, was to help raise the profile of the human rights expertise of various academics in the Queen’s Law Faculty (as it was then).

The Faculty had established a Masters in Human Rights Law in 1988, one of the first in the UK, and the fact that it was being offered in Belfast, a city which had had more than its fair share of human rights issues to cope with during the previous decades, made the Masters attractive to a wide range of people. In the 1990s the Centre acted as a hub around which interested academics and students could organise events, collaborate in research and promote the values inherent in human rights. After the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement in 1998 the Centre intensified its research activities and the Masters programme attracted even more students than before, especially from abroad. Many people who are now senior police officers, judges, politicians and human rights activists are alumni of the programme and contributed greatly to the Centre’s activities while at Queen’s.

Today, the Human Rights Centre, based in the School of Law, continues to support the promotion and protection of human rights in the local and global community. The HRC is privileged to draw on the work of a strong team of academics and postgraduate scholars who are nationally and internationally recognised for their work on human rights. Key areas of research interest and expertise include civil liberties, migration, gender and sexual violence, international criminal law, transitional justice, amnesty laws, reparations, victims and ex-combatants, health and human rights, business and human rights and climate change and environmental justice amongst others.

Members of the human rights centre are active in many different areas – leading and contributing to national and international research projects, publishing academic works, teaching undergraduate and postgraduate students in the School of Law, and engaging in knowledge transfer activities, including undertaking responses and consultations for civil society, governmental and international organisations. The HRC also organises a lively seminar series bringing internationally respected academics and practitioners to Queen’s throughout the year.

Offers funding

No, this infrastructure does not provide funding.

Founding year

1990

Contact details

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Categorisation

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University affiliation(s)

Queen's University Belfast
Belfast