The Kalliopi Koufa Foundation for the Promotion of International Law and Human Rights organizes the 6th session of the Thessaloniki Summer Courses on International Law and Human Rights from 23 June to 2 July 2021, on the topic of ?Social Rights in International Law: From Theory to Practice?. The summer course will be held entirely online and the programme is open to advanced law students, researchers and practitioners. The Faculty of this 10-day intensive course includes, among others, Manfred Nowak (Vienna, Venice Global Campus of Human Rights), Fons Coomans (Maastricht), Christina Binder (Bundeswehr University, Munich), Ralph Wilde (UCL), Zdzislaw Kedzia (UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, TBC), Karin Lukas (European Committee of Social Rights), Amaya Ubeda de Torres (Venice Commission), Aristoteles Constantinides (University of Cyprus), Solon Solomon (Brunel).
The Summer Course will focus on social rights in contemporary international law. Although all human rights are nowadays considered as indivisible and interdependent, economic, social and cultural rights have received less attention than civil and political rights in both domestic and international law, due to the prevalent perception in past decades that they were non-enforceable and non-justiciable programmatic rights. The Summer Course will approach this perception critically and will highlight recent developments that illustrate the renewed interest and relevance of social rights in the contemporary world.
In this context, the Summer Course will delve into a variety of crucial aspects of social rights in contemporary international law. The lectures by renowned scholars and experts in the field will focus, inter alia, on the historical evolution of social rights as human rights; the main universal and regional instruments, particularly the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the European Social Charter, the controversial questions of justiciability, enforceability and extraterritorial effects of social rights; the nature and scope of state obligations to respect, protect and fulfill social rights; the obligation of non-State actors to uphold social rights in the framework of investment and other activities etc. These issues will be covered from a practical perspective by examining the most recent practice and case law of domestic courts, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the European Committee of Social Rights, the approach of the European Court of Human Rights and other regional courts and organs.