This week we’re looking at international human rights law. Amidst democratic backsliding, the weakening of international institutions, and conflict around the world, can international law still be a source of hope?
In this special episode, we take a deep dive into the ideas and career of our esteemed colleague and friend of the podcast, Professor Veronika Fikfak. Following her inaugural lecture as Professor of Human Rights and International Law at UCL’s Department of Political Science, we use the occasion to explore broader themes in international law, human rights, and academic life.
Veronika brings a wealth of experience from institutions across Europe, including Oxford, Cambridge, Copenhagen, and London. She currently serves as co-director of UCL’s Institute for Human Rights and as an ad hoc judge at the European Court of Human Rights. Her leadership of two major European Research Council-funded projects places her at the forefront of cutting-edge human rights scholarship.
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[00:00:05] Alan Renwick: This is UCL Uncovering Politics and this week we're looking at international human rights law. Amidst democratic backsliding, the weakening of international institutions and conflict around the world, can international law still be a source of hope?
Hello, my name is Alan Renwick, and welcome back to a whole new year of UCL Uncovering Politics, the podcast of the School of Public Policy and Department of Political Science at University College London.
We're looking forward very much to bringing you much fresh research about politics and policy over the coming weeks and months, and this week, rather than delving into a single new academic publication, as we often do, we are exploring, in the round, the ideas and career of our wonderful colleague and friend of the podcast, Professor Veronika Fikfak.
Veronika gave her inaugural lecture as Professor of Human Rights and International Law here in the UCL Department of Political Science in the spring. And, as regular listeners will know, we take such occasions as opportunities for some broader conversations.
Veronika is co-director of UCL's Institute for Human Rights. Her career to date has included stints in Oxford, Cambridge, and Copenhagen, as well as London. And she serves as an ad hoc judge at the European Court of Human Rights. She's also leader of two major human rights research projects funded by the European Research Council.
Veronika, congratulations on your inaugural lecture. Congratulations on that extraordinary CV that I've just gone through, and welcome back to UCL Uncovering Politics. It's fantastic to have you on again.
[00:01:43] Veronika Fikfak: Thank you very much. Thank you for having me.
[00:01:45] Alan Renwick: So we're going to be talking about international law today, particularly international human rights law. You argued in your lecture that though international law appears to be under severe stress at the mument, still we should maintain hope.
Before we get into that argument, could we perhaps just clarify the basics? When we're referring to international law, international human rights law, what actually are we talking about? I suspect that many of our listeners, even me to some extent, will be a little bit hazy as to what exactly we are talking about here.
[00:02:20] Veronika Fikfak: So we are usually talking about international agreements, and that's essentially contracts between states, usually on a massive scale. So a lot of states signing up to a treaty or a convention, we call it, that binds every state. So creates an obligation for every state to respect specific rights of their own people, or people on their territory. So for example, there's, you know, prohibition of torture. States will not torture, they won't use their police powers to torture people. We won't indefinitely detain people. And this is what states on international level accept. And then usually, in specific situations, they can be taken in front of a court or in front of a quasi-judicial body, and that's where individuals turn to.
But I wanna say that states have discretion in terms of whether they sign up to some of these and they don't have discretion where they're signing in terms of others. So for example, prohibition of torture is an obligation that applies across. Even to countries who haven't signed these treaties. So we have these exceptional rights, like torture, like prohibition of genocide, that even if you haven't signed up to it, there is a prohibition of committing that kind of crime.
[00:03:38] Alan Renwick: And where do those come from? How has that principle been enshrined such that it does apply even to countries that haven't signed up.
[00:03:45] Veronika Fikfak: So those are what we call customary rules of international law. Usually they're called even more specifically jus cogens. And that means it's like a power or higher protection offered to individuals.
And they come from practice of states. Where states over time, even without something being written down, have come to develop the belief that that rule has to apply in international relations. And so this is why there are specific norms that we apply regardless of what countries have signed up to them in a treaty.
[00:04:19] Alan Renwick: How far back in time does that go?
[00:04:23] Veronika Fikfak: Well, a lot was generated, I would say, after the Second World War. So the Nuremberg Trials here was super important because the question there arose whether you could actually try people for crimes that they had committed that had not actually been written into law, and so whether or not these rules could be retroactive. And the answer there was yes, you could because there was a common understanding. But I think the Second World War really led to a recognition of these rules as existing, even if practice beforehand was relevant to their development.
[00:04:59] Alan Renwick: So that's a very quick hint of the history.
[00:05:02] Veronika Fikfak: Yeah.
[00:05:02] Alan Renwick: How should we characterize the health of international human rights law today?
[00:05:08] Veronika Fikfak: So, I struggle with this question because, obviously, the title of my lecture was "hope". But actually, if you look around the world today, and even after I gave the lecture the summer, you know, if you turn on the tv, you've got a number of different conflicts that are in the news.
We've got the question of Palestine, and really starvation going on there. You've got Sudan, you have the war and invasion in Ukraine. So you've got a number of different hotspots, I'll say, where horrible things are happening. And so it's hard to talk about international law being in a good place.
I've also just come back from Geneva, the UN and Geneva, where the US last year pulled out of the Human Rights Council and said it wouldn't pay it's budgetary contribution into the UN system. Which of course means that the institutions now of human rights institutions in the UN are really struggling to perform their work.
So when you put those kind of things together, and it's not only the US, we've got a number of other countries in Europe that are pulling out their budgetary contributions. When you've got these kind of things happening, in addition to the question of, you know, countries or leaders being outspoken about the fact that they wanna undermine the authority of international institutions. Those kind of lead us to be in a place where you are kind of sad and worried about the state of international law. But! So the study we created, and I can talk about that later, led us really to the conclusion that when you look at the nitty gritty, then actually this famous statement by Louis Henkin that most states obey most international law most of the time, still holds.
[00:06:49] Alan Renwick: Mm-hmm.
And does that apply all around the world? Do I remember the, the particular focus of your research was on Europe.
[00:06:56] Veronika Fikfak: It was Europe, yes.
[00:06:57] Alan Renwick: Yeah. So do you want to say a little bit about that research first and then may, maybe we can explore how, how far it extends beyond Europe as well.
[00:07:04] Veronika Fikfak: Sure. Thank you. Yeah. So we wanted to understand how countries around the Council of Europe, so it's 47 countries, we counted Russia because it was in our data set as well up until 2022. So how 47 countries of the Council of Europe respect the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights.
And really the court is there to take a treaty that we mentioned before, like the European Convention. Apply it in practice and say, I dunno, “country X has violated these person's rights”, and then this is what you need to do in response. And we were looking whether countries actually fix the violations that they have already committed.
So not whether they act preventatively, but whether they fix once an international institution has identified a problem. And we found that in 80-85% of cases, countries do do something in response to a judgment. That they obey the court, that they pay the damages, but that they also undertake certain measures to ensure that the behavior or the conduct doesn't happen again.
I wanna say that this wasn't consistent across all countries. So when we're talking about 85%, that's obviously an average. So Russia in that graph was only 39% of its judgments complied with. Whilst you've got a number of Western countries, even, you know, the Czechia was at a hundred percent. So you've got that discrepancy between the different countries Azerbaijan was also extremely low, I think around 17%. But overall the average was around 80-85%.
[00:08:39] Alan Renwick: And why do countries comply most of the time?
[00:08:45] Veronika Fikfak: So different things. First of all, we found that the major reason where compliance doesn't happen is capacity.
So countries either don't have the money to do it right away and they need a bit more time, or they don't know how to do it. And actually, once you share with them ideas for how to do it; so for example, there's a lot of cases where you've got prisoners living in very poor conditions in a prison, and that's a violation of the European convention. And so the question is, do you go and build a new prison or do you actually reduce the number of prisoners? Do you, for example, change your laws so that you don't put everyone in a prison but you actually just put the most serious offenders. So you've got this kind of spectrum of different measures that you could take as a state, but if you don't know them, you're really intimidated by the idea of having to fix your prison system. And so through sharing between countries, we found that countries actually, even though they take a bit of time, they do in the end undertake measures that make things better on the ground.
[00:09:51] Alan Renwick: So that's Europe.
[00:09:52] Veronika Fikfak: Yeah.
[00:09:52] Alan Renwick: How well do we know the situation beyond Europe?
[00:09:56] Veronika Fikfak: So we didn't study beyond Europe, but I think it's really important to underline that a number of countries beyond Europe have not signed up. Not to the European convention, of course, 'cause it doesn't apply, but to the UN covenant on political and civil rights. And in relation to that covenant, actually, when you look at the map, a number of countries have signed it, but what they haven't done is they haven't actually accepted that there's a court, or we call it a quasi-judicial body. So the human rights committee that has the power to hold that country to account, it will not, be able to rule on a violation. So what that means is that when we go outside of Europe, and I'll say outside of Latin America, which has the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, you've got a number of countries that in principle have signed up these rights as ideas as values. But actually when it comes to holding them to account, they haven't accepted that a body is allowed to do that. And so we have limited capability of assessing how they're doing on human rights. There's really no way for an individual to take them in front of a body and say "my rights have been violated". So our capacity of assessing that around the world is not equal to Europe and to Latin America.
[00:11:23] Alan Renwick: I said at the start of the podcast that your core argument in your lecture is that we should be hopeful. You are offering us a number of reasons for why we shouldn't be hopeful! So in Europe it's 85% on average, but well below that in some of the countries where presumably we ought to be most concerned about some of the activities that are taking place on the ground, and also concerned about what's happening in various other countries beyond Europe as well.
Why should we be hopeful?
[00:11:53] Veronika Fikfak: So number one, I think international law is a long-term game, and we need to think about it as a long-term game. It can't just be the question of today. It needs to be a question of 50 - a hundred years. These are rules we've agreed to. But I argue in the lecture that really what gives me hope is that we have international law, right? So we have this way of labeling what is happening today in the world, even if they're horrible things, atrocities. We are, after 1945, able to give these events a label. And even through that, we are doing already half of the work by saying “this is genocide, these are war crimes”.By giving that label, it really categorizes it as a crime. And it says, “these are the people who should be going there and collecting evidence, and this is the court that it should go to”. So we are going beyond something we don't like, but actually saying “this is illegal”, which gives it more power.
The second thing that gives me hope is really that, in looking at the European system, we actually went into the different states and we spoke to civil servants. And I wanna really wanna underline this. We spoke to civil servant servants in Hungary.We spoke to civil servants in Poland. So we spoke to people in countries where democracy, if you like, was under attack and where their hands may have been tied in terms of what they could do. But the belief that they had to do something, or the belief in human rights, the belief that they would find a way, or that they would create a way even if they had to wait five - 10 years for a new leader to be in place, that was still there.
So I really came out of this interviews with a feeling that over a long time, 20-30 years, human rights and international law can go forward and it can provide protection and progress for the people on the ground, because of the people working in these institutions. So that's my my second point.
The third point is really my students and the people I've met on the ground mobilizing, using international human rights to bring about change. So that what we're seeing now in terms of climate change, what we're seeing in terms of Palestine, is really young people saying "this is enough. We can't see this happening for the next 10, 20 years, it needs to stop". And that mobilization has created a lot of work for international lawyers, for people who are appearing in front of courts and for courts themselves. So the South African case in front of the ICJ, but also the kind of small island states coming together, to sue other states in relation to climate change and what has happened. That really came from young people who are saying we need to use the law to bring about real change to people on the ground. I think those three things, even in these dark times for me, mean that we're not stuck in a place where nothing will happen.
[00:15:12] Alan Renwick: It's really interesting, because when you were describing the second of those reasons — about civil servants maintaining a commitment to these norms even when political leadership in some countries does not — my concern would be that perhaps the leadership simply hasn't yet managed to purge the administration of all of these people. But they’re on the way, and at some point, they may succeed.
Particularly now, we’re seeing a shift in the kind of international language around these issues, in significant part due to the election of Trump and the arrival of a very different kind of discourse from the most powerful country on earth. That shift enables and empowers leaders who want to weaken human rights discourse globally, allowing them to go further and deeper in removing people who support these norms from their administrations.
But I guess you're saying that even if that does happen, the third reason you offered — broader public support and civil society engagement — means that it’s incredibly hard for even authoritarian-minded leaders to truly shift the norms underpinning all of this.
[00:16:36] Veronika Fikfak: There's a lot of discussion at the moment about whether we should change the interpretation of freedom of speech to allow for more conservative speech, or whether we should renegotiate human rights — for example, here in the UK, the European Convention on Human Rights — and whether we should withdraw from these kinds of agreements. There’s also debate about whether we should reinterpret Article Eight, the right to home and the right to privacy.
I think in today's world, it's really difficult to get countries around a table to agree to a new treaty, a new agreement, or even a reinterpretation of an existing one. What we have — both in terms of institutions and in terms of law — is what we have. And in some sense, we need to fight to protect it and use it as much as we can.
It’s often very frustrating because it doesn’t always get you to an end result, but I think we need to work towards it. In the lecture, I talk about how I have colleagues who are arguing cases, and then I have colleagues — myself included — who are arguing how the judgments that come out of courts should be implemented, and how countries should go about putting them in place.
I think we need both of those groups of people to help really change things on the ground.
[00:18:01] Alan Renwick: We've talked so far about some of the key arguments and findings in your work. Let’s turn now to your own path — the journey that led you to this research. How did you get into this area in the first place?
[00:18:15] Veronika Fikfak: I would say, in terms of research, I stumbled into it. My father was an academic, so I always thought I would do a PhD. I didn’t necessarily expect to become an academic myself, but I ended up being one. More broadly, though, I always knew I wanted to work in human rights.
I think that stems partly from where I come from. As I mentioned in the lecture, I was raised in a socialist state in the 1980s, where freedom of speech was limited. There was censorship. There were books we couldn’t read, things we didn’t have access to. As an academic, my father wasn’t allowed to undertake certain kinds of work. He studied rituals and was particularly interested in how religious celebrations — like Easter or Christmas — took place in secret, because they had to be hidden from the socialist authorities.
That brought with it a number of consequences: being followed, or our walls being — well, like in the film The Lives of Others — our walls “speaking”. They had microphones in them. Our telephones weren’t safe. You couldn’t say whatever you wanted. So that was one part of it.
The second part was my mother’s belief that if you found a profession that was a calling, you’d never work a day in your life. And by going into human rights, I never feel I’m working. You could say I work all the time, but in reality, it’s just my life. I’ve been lucky to find that calling — and to find that I can change people’s lives through it.
The third part came when I arrived in the UK and discovered a new way of thinking — where you can be critical, where you have access to knowledge we didn’t have under socialism. A whole horizon opened up for me. I learned to have my own opinion, which was new — to actually think, and not just regurgitate what I’d been told or taught.
So I’d say those three things together brought me to human rights, to academia, and to thinking about how to use this work to make a difference for people.
[00:20:47] Alan Renwick: And do you think that background gives you a different perspective on these sorts of issues compared to those who’ve grown up, say, in the UK?
[00:20:56] Veronika Fikfak: I think what it does is make the issues more alive. I had a wonderful childhood, but I still remember the feeling of anxiety — not being able to say whatever I wanted because someone might have been listening. Those experiences shape you. And I think they make what you do feel more tangible. You feel a stronger urge to make a difference to the person you’re speaking to.
[00:21:32] Alan Renwick: As I mentioned in the introduction, you combine being an academic with serving as an ad hoc judge on the European Court of Human Rights.
[00:21:39] Veronika Fikfak: Mm-hmm.
[00:21:40] Alan Renwick: Firstly, what does that involve? What does it mean you actually do? And secondly, how does that inform your academic practice?
[00:21:47] Veronika Fikfak: An ad hoc judge is someone who steps in when the main judge on the bench — at the European Court of Human Rights — is conflicted. For whatever reason, the ad hoc judge will sit in for that single case, examine the facts, apply the law, and participate in deliberations with the other judges.
[00:22:09] Alan Renwick: How often does that happen?
[00:22:11] Veronika Fikfak: It really depends on who the main judge is. But what it gives you is exposure to real cases. And what strikes me is how hard it is to reach what we call justice — how many years, how many instances you have to go through to get to an international institution like the European Court of Human Rights. How much you have to fight to be listened to and to have your case heard.
And then, in the end, there are three or five people who decide whether you win or lose. It’s a humbling experience. You see truly horrific cases, and at the same time, you’re constrained by the law. But you also feel a deep desire to do something for the person who’s there.
[00:23:00] Alan Renwick: You’ve led us very nicely into the new research you’re now embarking upon. We’ve been talking about your past work, but you’ve just started a new European Research Council grant.
[00:23:12] Veronika Fikfak: Mm-hmm.
[00:23:13] Alan Renwick: What’s that looking at?
[00:23:14] Veronika Fikfak: It’s actually looking at what I was just describing. The project is called Break the Bias, and I want to understand how people get to international human rights institutions — and when they don’t. What are the obstacles to seeking justice? What barriers exist along the way? And how much of a role do lawyers play in that process?
It was triggered by a statistic I came across: of all the cases that come to the European Court of Human Rights, only 25% are brought by women. The rest are brought by men. That discrepancy doesn’t make sense. So I wanted to understand — what is it about women that makes them less likely to make these claims? Is it something about the law? About the lawyers they encounter? About the psychological strain of the process?
[00:24:13] Alan Renwick: How are you researching that?
[00:24:14] Veronika Fikfak: We’re looking at all the cases at domestic level that could potentially be taken to an international level. Then we’re determining which ones go up and which don’t. We’ll go into the countries and speak to the lawyers of these individuals to understand why the cases didn’t progress.
We’re tracking them step by step — or instance by instance — to understand who falls off, what the groups are, and what types of cases are affected. What I’m really interested in is whether there’s an area of litigation that simply isn’t happening — and whether that means there’s an area of human rights law we don’t yet have.
[00:24:56] Alan Renwick: Is there already bias in the cases that could go forward? So is the bias present at domestic level, or is it something that emerges more at the European level?
[00:25:07] Veronika Fikfak: There is bias at domestic level, but that’s been thoroughly researched. We have a lot of data on who actually pursues a claim legally, and who resolves things amicably. But we’ve never had a study looking at who goes to the international level.
This also came to light during my time working in Denmark. There’s an almost cultural embarrassment about suing your own country. People will take cases to Danish courts, but when it comes to taking cases to Strasbourg, they won’t sue Denmark. The only individuals who do are migrants — because they don’t have that same feeling a Dane might have, living in a homogenous society. There’s something about suing your own country that feels shameful. So I wonder if there’s a cultural element to it as well.
[00:26:08] Alan Renwick: Gosh, how interesting. When you said this has already been well studied at domestic level, I initially assumed you’d have some hunches about what to expect at the international level too. But you’re also suggesting there may be mechanisms at play internationally that don’t operate domestically.
[00:26:25] Veronika Fikfak: Exactly. What we know at the domestic level is that legalising your claim depends heavily on whether you have the money to hire a lawyer.
[00:26:35] Alan Renwick: Mm.
[00:26:35] Veronika Fikfak: Lawyers are incredibly important, so it depends on legal aid. And if there’s no legal aid, it depends on how affluent you are. That’s been studied extensively — people have analysed outcomes based on postcode, background, and the type of lawyer involved, whether they’re specialists or not. But when you move to the international level, I think something else comes into play.
[00:26:59] Alan Renwick: Mm, fascinating. And how long do we have to wait until we see some results from this?
[00:27:04] Veronika Fikfak: Um, what’s the—2030? 2031 is when it ends.
[00:27:07] Alan Renwick: Gosh. Okay, so—
[00:27:09] Veronika Fikfak: Long term!
[00:27:10] Alan Renwick: Well, hopefully we can have you back on the podcast in the meantime to hear how the investigations are progressing.
[00:27:17] Veronika Fikfak: Absolutely.
[00:27:17] Alan Renwick: Just before we wrap up — we’re coming towards the end of our time — we’ve explored your career in various ways. We’ve also explored the fact that, despite the challenges in the world today, you still see fundamental reasons for hope.
Final question: many of our listeners are young scholars or practitioners thinking about what path to take in future. What advice would you give them if they want to work in international law or make a difference in human rights? Is international law the place to do it? If so, how? What paths are open?
[00:27:58] Veronika Fikfak: I’d say there are a number of different paths. You can go through an NGO — and there are many excellent ones. You can take a legal route, by becoming a barrister or solicitor. There are now very good law firms that specialise exclusively in international law litigation. And it’s not just state-to-state work — there are arbitrations where you represent or sue businesses. It’s very interesting work.
You can also go through diplomacy or politics, by working for governments. I’ve just come back from Geneva, where I met a number of diplomats and country representatives. They work there to improve the system and uphold rights globally.
Then, of course, there are international institutions. Despite budgetary constraints, they are still looking for good people who will deliver on their promises.
Whatever route you choose, I think the key lesson is: don’t give up. International law can be discouraging — there are many people, many barriers. You need to carve out your own path. I found mine through academia, but I also worked at the International Court of Justice, the European Court of Human Rights, and UNESCO. I tried different things before settling on academia.
That process of trying, but insisting on your own path — that’s what worked for me. The lesson was never to give up. Insist. Find another way. Be creative. Create your own “in”.
I’ve got friends who became barristers and found clients, and built cases out of situations others didn’t think were cases. So it really depends on someone’s initiative and persistence.
[00:30:10] Alan Renwick: Well, thank you so much, Veronika. We’re so glad you’ve persisted and not given up — you’re doing incredibly important work, and it’s wonderful to have you as a colleague here. Thank you for sharing your career, your research, and your insights with us today.
[00:30:26] Veronika Fikfak: Thank you, Alan.
[00:30:28] Alan Renwick: We’ve been exploring the career and research of Professor Veronika Fikfak, Professor of Human Rights and International Law here at UCL. If you’d like to hear more, you can watch Veronika’s inaugural lecture, delivered this spring — we’ll include the link in the show notes for this episode.
Next week, we’ll be looking at the relationship between immigration, housing policies, and support for the far right.
To make sure you don’t miss that or any future episodes of UCL Uncovering Politics, just subscribe. You can do so on Apple, Google Podcasts, or whatever podcast provider you use. And while you’re there, we’d love it if you could take a moment to rate or review us too.
I’m Alan Renwick. This episode was produced by Eleanor Kingwell-Banham and Kaiser Kang. Our theme music is written and performed by John Mann. This has been UCL Uncovering Politics. Thank you for listening.