Large parts of 2020 have been marked by an unprecedented global health crisis with economic, social and humanitarian dimensions that resulted in a severe human rights impact. COVID-19 exposed the weaknesses of public health care systems and the access thereto, prevailing structural inequalities and the fragility of the rule of law in times of emergency. Hate speech, fake news, the targeting of vulnerable groups, nationalism and populism spread alongside the virus and pave the way for the adoption of repressive measures for purposes unrelated to the pandemic. Human Rights appeared as afterthoughts rather than as guiding principles in the political strategies responding to the global pandemic.
The 2021 edition is therefore dedicated to the impact the global pandemic had on human rights protection in Europe and related submissions are welcome. In particular, we encourage submissions on responses by the EU, the CoE and the OSCE to the pandemic from a human rights perspective.
Authors will be invited to submit full contributions based on an abstract (max 500 words) that should be send by 11 December 2020. Abstracts should be submitted with a short bio to lisa.heschl@uni-graz.at. The deadline for submitting the manuscript is end of March 2021.
The Yearbook is edited by representatives of the three major Austrian human rights research, training and teaching institutions – the European Training and Research Centre for Human Rights and Democracy of the University of Graz; the Austrian Human Rights Institute of the University of Salzburg and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights, Vienna – and the Global Campus of Human Rights, Venice. It is published by Intersentia and all contributions are subject to a double-blind review process.
