USHRJ 2025 Issue
Articles from USHRJ's 2025 issue featuring early-career human rights academics.
Europe's Externalisation of Asylum Procedures: Is a Legal and Ethical Alternative Possible?
Emilia Vassiliades - Published 08/04/2025
Key words: Border externalisation, Extraterritorial obligations, Refugees, Human Rights
Abstract: This article undertakes a critical interrogation of the externalisation of asylum procedures by European states, with particular emphasis on the EU-Turkey Agreement as a case study, to determine the feasibility of a juridically and ethically defensible model of externalisation. While externalisation is not inherently a violation of international human rights law (IHRL), its implementation often leads to breaches of IHRL and international refugee legislation, including the principle of non-refoulement and the rights to life and protection from torture or inhuman treatment. The article first assesses the legal accountability issues that arise from states engaging in externalisation, demonstrating how current practices frequently contravene international obligations. It then explores legal alternatives, proposing a framework for externalisation that aligns with IHRL, including robust procedural safeguards and good faith commitments. However, it contends that mere legal compliance remains an insufficient condition for the realisation of an ethically defensible approach. The article highlights how dominant migration narratives, rooted in neocolonial and security-driven discourses, perpetuate exclusionary policies that marginalise people on the move. In a modest but novel contribution, this article posits that for any form of ethical externalisation, a fundamental shift towards decolonial and intersectional narratives is necessary. By reframing migration not as a crisis to be managed but as a shared global responsibility, states may move towards legal and policy configurations that transcend reductive narratives and categorisations, embracing a praxis that upholds both legal obligations and moral imperatives.
Charlotte Meyer - Published 02/05/2025
Key words: Re-victimisation, feminist jurisprudence, gender justice, legal paradox, bodily autonomy.
Abstract: The presumption of innocence is a fundamental human right. Yet, its unlimited protection winds up undermining survivors’ fundamental rights and freedoms in cases of sexual violence. This paper explored how patriarchal tendencies and victim-blaming attitudes re-victimise survivors and retroactively revoke their freedom of movement and bodily autonomy. The importance of the presumption of innocence in ensuring human dignity can, however, not be understated. The analysis highlights systemic issues in prosecuting sexual assault cases, including the placement of the burden of proof on survivors, extremely low conviction rates, and public scrutiny. It also addresses the racial disparities in wrongful convictions, emphasising the need for anti-discriminatory reforms. To balance the rights of both the accused and the survivor, the paper proposes six pathways forward: (1) regularising sentences for sex offenders, (2) implementing stricter monitoring mechanisms, (3) deconstructing the binary plaintiff-defendant dynamic in legal proceedings, (4) expanding admissible evidence, (5) prioritising the prevention of sexual violence, and (6) distinguishing between true and false allegations of rape. Overall, the paper advocates for a more victim-sensitive approach in cases of sexual violence to ensure justice and dignity for all parties.
Bill Page - Published 24/06/2025
Key words: Non-Human Dignity, Environmental Institutionalism, Intersectional Rights, Public Morality 
Abstract: In this article, I contextualise the recent European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruling in Executief van de Moslims van België and Others v. Belgium (hereafter referred to as the ‘Belgium ruling’) within the broader cultural distinction between non-human animals and humans. In this case, the ECtHR was tasked with balancing the right to freedom of religion with a ban on the slaughter of non-human animals without prior stunning, as a measure intended to reduce animal suffering.
I contextualise the ‘Belgium ruling’ by tracing how the policing of the boundary between human and non-human animals has been perpetuated through colonialism and imperialism, which employed a racialised hierarchy of species to justify the dehumanisation of colonised peoples. With the emergence of human rights, the United Nations actively sought to establish the recognition of all peoples as belonging to a single species, unified by a shared biological foundation. Yet this effort also reveals that the concept of species is not a neutral biological category but a social and cultural construct, historically entangled with white supremacy and colonial domination. Such attempts have obscured human animality and denied dignity to non-human animals.
This is significant because attributing animal status to certain people has long served as a powerful means of undermining human dignity and rights. I undertake a review of legal cases concerning non-human animals, from Victorian England to the Belgium ruling, highlighting a persistent trend: the value of non-human animals is consistently assessed through the lens of ‘public morals’ or ‘human interest’, rather than their inherent worth. This has created significant ambiguity and a circular line of reasoning where the justification of animal suffering and exploitation is framed solely in terms of human morals or interests.
Ultimately, the ways in which humans treat the non-human world inevitably reflect back onto human societies, as history has shown, and as we are witnessing again in the face of the climate crisis. As powerful groups continue to draw on the language of dehumanisation, it becomes increasingly urgent to recognise that humans are animals. I therefore conclude by affirming that the dignity of all animals, human and non-human alike, is inviolable. Such an approach holds the potential to confront the very injustices and forms of oppression that the human rights framework was created to address.