Doctoral Programme in Human Rights, Democracy and International Justice

• Summary
• Structure
• Organisation
• Competencies
• Admission
• Research lines
• Quality

• Training complement
• Cross functional activities
• Training activities

The students without specific training in human rights (additional entry profiles) have to
take a maximum of 15 ECTS of complementary training. The complementary training to be taken
will be indicated by the Academic Committee among the modules of the Master’s degree in Human Rights, Democracy and International Justice, taking into consideration the research line of the programme in which the student is interested and their previous training.
41083 Historical, Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives. (15 ECTS)
The content of this module is oriented to provide the student with more complex conceptual tools that those that were taught in the Undergraduate degree and the Master’s degree. To understand that human rights are an heterogeneous reality unit, delivering a critical and global reflection that surpasses the sectorial character or internal point of view of many of the subjects in the Undergraduate degree.
The goals of this module are:
· To learn in depth the history of human rights and the processes and circumstances in which they are violated.
· To relate human rights with the conditions, the means and historical and social circumstances in which they were originated and created, in order to build up a historical base of the concept.
· To have the necessary elements to develop a critique on the theories about human rights and illustrate the presumptions of any order that affect human rights.
· To study and understand human rights as a connection point between Law and moral and as a key aspect of the legitimacy system of Law and the State.
· To know and use legal arguments applied to human rights.
· To analyse and articulate and argument based on the weighting of rights.
The module will be continuously assessed by exercises, dynamics and lectures that must be done every week in the classroom before the lesson.
A written exam that assesses each one of the thematic parts of the module.
The 70% of the grades will be the mark from the global test (final exam).
The 30% of the grades will be the mark from the continuous assessment (attendance and participation) and from
the assessed activities: in-classroom exercises, submission of weekly questionnaires, practices preparation
and the participation in class.
41084 Legal Guarantees of Human Rights. (15 ECTS)
This module focus on the protection and guarantee of fundamental rights, on the equality and non-discrimination principle, on the international and regional human rights protection, and on the international humanitarian Law and armed conflicts.
The goal is that students delve in the knowledge and understanding of the national and international jurisdictional protection mechanisms of human rights, that they practise the articulation of the different judicial protection mechanisms and acquire several techniques for the application of the equality principle as
a cross-cutting principle.
The goals of this module are:
· contribute to the student’s learning on equality and non-discrimination.
· Transfer the concept of cross-disciplinary as a characteristic of fundamental rights and the equality principle.
· Instruct the student in a practical way about the most relevant jurisdictional decisions on human rights.
· Analyse those cases in which two or more circumstances that place some individuals in a specially vulnerable position and, then, in a position of discrimination converge.
· Delve in the knowledge and understanding of the universal and regional human rights protection systems.
· Develop the necessary skills to undertake a research in this legal field.
· Promote the ability for assessing and analysing critically the fundamental concepts, the provisions of the different relevant international instruments
and the international mechanisms for human rights protection.
· Know the labour regulation about the protection of fundamental and equality rights.
· Understand the problems in the practical implementation of that protection and the limits of a merely reactive and sanctioning protection. That the students understand the essential role of a pro-active and encouraging protection and the means that exist for it: equality plans, action protocols, internal complaints systems.
· Reflect on the role of collective negotiation and trusts in that protection and the tensions about it, and specially reflect on the social protection, produced by the economic situation.
· Reflect on the problems that arise from the procedural mans and the mechanisms through which they act: problems of proof, recognition of compensations, declarations of nullity, etc.
· Achieve a global and comprehensive view of fundamental rights protection in the civil proceeding, prima facie by civil courts and, afterwards, through the appeal for protection before the Constitutional Court
· Analyse the procedural means and the processes to follow to apply for fundamental rights protection.
· Know the fundamental principles of the punitive power.
The learning assessment will be made through a continuous assessment, assigning a 50% of
the mark to the attendance and participation in class. For this we will consider:
The contribution of each student to the debate that may arise after the presentation of each topic, valuing, in that
sense, the preparation made previous to the lectures provided.
The other 50% of the final mark will be the result of taking a final test about the contents of the module.
In this case we will value:
- The presentation of the topic chosen and the ability to answer the doubts and questions that arise during the test.
- The structure, the systematisation, the analysis and the legal arguments provided in the answers to those questions.
- The ability to relate contents.
43231 Multiculturalism, Globalisation and Citizenship. (10 ECTS)
This module addresses in a cross-disciplinary way the issues that create tension in human rights in a globalised world, with multicultural societies that pose challenges continuously. The four thematic axis on which this module is based, set in different sessions, have as driving force the critical analysis of multiculturalism, globalisation and citizenship, from which we approach the study of:
· the foundation of equality and recognition.
· The respect to the private life in a globalised world.
· The violence against women: perspective from Criminal Law.
· Labour Law in the era of globalisation: labour discrimination (I) and (II)
The goals of this module are:
· Study and understand the meaning and scope of the equality and recognition foundations, having the necessary elements to reflect and criticised about the theories on human rights and their practical application.
· Analyse critically the rights that have in common the protection and respect of privacy, the right to “be left alone”, and their relevance in a globalised world.
· Know the treatment of gender in criminal law and the criminal protection against gender violence, jointly to the guarantees of human rights.
The learning assessment will be as follow:
· Class attendance is an essential requirement to be assessed, having to attend to a minimum of 80% of the sessions. With an attendance of less than this percentage, and except for justified reasons, the students will not be assessed, appearing in the exam records as absent.
· Joint assessment of each subject, resulting from the average mark of each test (works or exercises) put by the teaching staff. To pass the subjects, it is necessary to obtain a minimum of a D (40-59) in each of the tests and relating to their content.
· Continuous assessment, without meaning that some tests, exercises or resolution for specific questions may be required throughout the sessions.
43232 International Justice and Human Rights. (10 ECTS)
This module brings together different issues related to the analysis of Human Rights in the context of legal globalisation:
Firstly, we approach in a problematic way the transformation process of International Law in a
cosmopolitan law. Issues like the tension between sovereignty and human rights or the legal, political and moral challenges
that arise from the procedures of massive violations of human rights and that are unavoidable objects of
study and reflection.
Secondly, we present a view of the problems derived from the impunity of the most execrable crimes
against humanity throughout History, and the evolution of the creation of International Criminal Law
until the Rome Statute in 1997 is studied.
Finally, issues related to the International Humanitarian Law and armed conflicts
, focusing on those of special current importance are analysed.
The basic goals that the students are intended to reach through this module are:
· The ability to analyse the effects of legal globalisation on the protection and defence of human rights.
· The ability to implement the different mechanisms that exist against serious and systematic violations of human rights internationally.
· The awareness about the importance of human rights for strengthening the democratic society.
· The ability to reflect from the view of human rights about the different international and transnational phenomena.
The attendance to the set sessions is mandatory for the assessment. Professors will take into account the active participation of the student in the different sessions, as well as the works, cases and practices required.
For the final assessment we will take into account the work made by the student in the module as a whole.
43230 Biopolitics and biolaw. (10 ECTS)
This module approaches current issues before which the ownership and guarantee of human rights results to be controversial in terms of political and legal conceptions of the human body. Human rights in this
subject face the challenges of new technologies, racism, sexism, speciesism or all those justified discriminations around disability.
The subject covers different disciplines and approaches, and can cover different problems and authors; from Foucault,
Agamben and Arendt in the harshest version of the regulations about life and the human body, the power and the discipline
to feminist debates on women’s autonomy, through the discrimination suffered by
people due to social, legal and political constructions and exclusions based on the body: racism, disabilities...; or the rights limits and the benefit of rights justified in this series of talks set by the subject.
Class attendance as an essential requirement to be assessed, having to attend to a minimum of 80% of the
sessions. With an attendance of less than this percentage, and except for justified reasons, the students will not be assessed, appearing in the exam records
as absent.
Joint assessment of each subject, resulting from the average mark of each test (works or exercises)
put by the teaching staff. To pass the subjects, it is necessary to obtain a minimum of a D (40-59) in each of the
tests and relating to their content.
Continuous assessment, without meaning that some tests, exercises or resolution for specific questions may be required throughout the sessions.
Complementary training have to be taken by full-time students during the first term and by part-time students during the first terms of the Doctoral Programme.