Introduction to HUMR5508

The lectures of the course HUMR5508 – Human Rights and Diversity: Leading cases and Core Dilemmas - starts today, Monday 27 January 2014.

I and Ingvill Plesner had a very interesting experience cooperating in teaching and discussing with past years students, and we hope that we are able to make the exchange among us even better this year having taken into account the comments that last year’s students made. Therefore, we start up the course by addressing some of the core dilemmas that we focus on during the course. It is important that you take the time to discuss these issues with the different lectures that you meet during the course.

We will discuss cases from international –regional human rights institutions and bring up legal and ethical dilemmas that are, or should have been, addressed by the international organs. Starting each lecture, you are expected to have prepared a "main case" and to present briefly the cases in cooperation with the other students participating in the course until we have discussed all six of them. The course includes also "additional cases" which will be used to further discuss the relevant issues. Throughout the course our aim is to focus our discussions on three themes:

1. The scope and limitations of the right to freedom of religion and belief, minority and indigenous peoples’ rights.

2. Legal and ethical dilemmas in dealing with conflicts between individual and collective rights in these three fields of international human rights law.

3. Legal and ethical dilemmas in dealing with the legitimate interests of minorities and the majority.

The course includes one week where you do not have any lectures and at this time you will have the time to review the cases and the readings in order to review what we have discussed so far and prepare for the remaining lectures and discussions in the course. We are looking forward to meeting you all and to have discussions on these important topics.

Sincerely yours,

Maria Lundberg