The Centre is an independent academic institution monitoring human rights developments both domestically and worldwide, issuing a monthly Bulletin, as well as organizing conferences.
In February 2013 the Center became focused on issues related to connections between business and human rights. In the Czech-language edition of the Bulletin (2/2013), the Center started the debate on these issues with an introductory article by Tereza Dolezalova.
To see the Bulletin, click here.
Helena Bončková, member of the Center, published a comment on the decision of the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Lutsenko v. Ukraine.
This decision is a crucial one as it is a first oficial opinion of the European Court of Human Rights contributing to debates relating to politization of trials of former members of "orange" government of Julia Tymoshenko.
A new issue of Czech Republic Human Rights Review is out. You can read it here. Inside you'll find e.g. an interview with professor Manfred Nowak or with the lega adviser of Radovan Karadžič Peter Robinson.
On December 6, the Centre for Human Rights and Democracy organized seminar "International Criminal Court: political and legal limits of effective functioning" in the premises of the Faculty of Law, Masaryk University.
Along with well-known guests - Robert Fremr, future judge at the ICC, and Katerina Uhlirova, who previously worked at the court-martial in Bosnia and Herzegovina - 60 debaters, mostly students of the Faculty of Social Studies, the Faculty of Law, or practitioners (mainly from the Supreme Court), attended the seminar. Students were primarily interested in Mr. Fremr's campaign,in the political dimension of decision-making in the ICC, in the influence of the Security Council and in the neutral position of the prosecutor.
Centre members organized a practical seminar on Discrimination at the Labour Market which took place on 5 November 2012 at the Faculty of Law, Masaryk University.
Ľubormír Majerčík, Anna Matušinová and Hubert Smekal published a chapter "The Czech Republic and the European Court of Human Rights in 2011"(Czech Yearbook of Public and Private International Law). Accessible here.
Helena Bončková and Hubert Smekal presented a paper Czech "Exemption" from the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights - Still with Us at the Czech Foreign Policy Symposium in the Cerninsky Palace in Prague.