2026 marks the 60th anniversary of the adoption of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), together known as the Twin Covenants (hereafter the Covenants). Designed in the aftermath of the Second World War and grounded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, these instruments sought to create an indivisible, interdependent and interrelated protective framework for human rights. Through rights ranging from political participation and freedom of expression to education, health, and cultural life, the Covenants articulate a comprehensive framework for safeguarding the conditions under which individuals can live a life in dignity. The Covenants were drafted with a perception of ‘the human’ as a rights-bearing individual subject with agency, and autonomy, situated within a state-based order and capable of securing and enforcing those rights.
Currently, rapid technological developments, including artificial intelligence, automated decision-making, biotechnological and digital forms of identity challenge conventional assumptions about what constitutes human personhood, agency, and vulnerabilities. Furthermore, digitalisation, new technologies and changed behavioural patterns with intended as well as unintended changes as to who is visible, recognized, and protected by human rights regimes, calls us to rethink the criteria by which human rights frameworks establish who (or what) counts as ’human’ and thus merits human rights protection.
In most contexts, already disadvantaged or marginalised people are especially vulnerable to having their human rights infringed upon or violated. Indigenous Peoples in the Global South are a good case in point: their experiences highlight tensions between individualised human rights and profoundly collective understandings of being human that currently are not easily accommodated under human rights law (de Mattos Vieira & Viaene, 2024). From another perspective, human rights discourse grapples with how to conceptualize victims of violations: either as passive objects, wholly at the mercy of their perpetrators, or as survivors who retain agency to varying degrees. (Tietjens Meyers, 2014).
At the same time, contemporary debates increasingly probe the outer boundaries of the human rights project itself, including rights of future persons, the protection of the environment and other non-human entities such as animals. The growing volume of digital remnants left by individuals also raises legal issues related to the integrity of persons who have passed away.
Against this background, the anniversary of the Covenants provides an opportunity to critically reassess how international human rights law defines, constructs, and limits the notion of ‘the human’ it seeks to protect. We welcome contributions from legal or socio-legal scholars as well as interdisciplinary contributions from sociology, political science, anthropology, criminology, peace and conflict studies, and other related fields. Papers may address, but are not limited to, the following lines of inquiry:
Constructing the rights‑bearing ‘human’ under the Covenants
- How can interdisciplinary approaches enhance analysis of collective and relational dimensions of human rights?
- How do the Covenants conceptualize ‘the human’ across individual, collective, and relational dimensions?
- How do human rights frameworks construct subjects as vulnerable, resilient, dependent, or autonomous?
- How do power relations, culture, and history shape the meaning of ‘the human’ in the interpretative practices tied to the Covenants?
- How do digital technologies, risk profiling and algorithmic scoring reshape personhood, and human agency under human rights law?
- How do cultural understandings of personhood interact with the universalist aspirations of the Covenants?
Establishing boundaries of ‘the human’ in human rights law
- How do intergenerational claims and future persons challenge prevailing conceptions of the human subject under the Covenants, and can they be reconciled?
- What rights, if any, prevail after a human being has passed away?
- How do the Covenants articulate the relationship between environmental protection and ‘the human’?
- To what extent does the jurisprudence from the Covenants articulate the relation between ‘the human’ and the environment and climate?
- What do efforts to protect non‑human animals reveal about the limits of legal subjecthood assumed by the Covenants and can such tension be remedied?
Researching ‘the human’ in human rights law
- How do theoretical frameworks and methodological choices shape the construction of ’the human’ in the Covenants?
- How does systemic integration across legal regimes affect definitions of ‘the human’ in the Covenants?
- What theoretical models best capture collective or relational dimensions of human dignity in the Covenants?
- Is the theoretical distinction between immediate and progressive obligations as captured in the Covenants still conceptually viable today?
- How can interdisciplinary approaches enhance analysis of collective and relational dimensions of human rights?
Submission Requirements
Scholars wishing to submit abstracts are invited to submit the following in a single document:
- Abstract (maximum 300 words)
- Keywords (5–8 keywords)
- Full name, institutional affiliation, and email address
- ORCID identifier if applicable
- Short CV (included in the same document)
Scientific Committee
Rigmor Argren, associate professor, Örebro University (Sweden)
Edzia Carvalho, senior lecturer, (SFHEA) University of Dundee (United Kingdom)
Carola Lingaas, professor, VID Specialized University (Norway)
Gentian Zyberi, professor, University of Oslo (Norway)
Organising Committee
Rigmor Argren, associate professor, Örebro University (Sweden)
Eleonor Kristoffersson, professor, Örebro University (Sweden)
Abstract deadline: 14 June 2026- Notification of acceptance: 17 July 2026
- Submission of draft papers: 1 October 2026
- Draft presentation at hybrid workshop: November 2026
- Full paper deadline: 1 March 2027 (for accepted presenters intending to publish, word limit 10000 words)
We have some funds that will cover the cost of refreshments and lunches during the workshop at Örebro University. Attendance will be free of charge, but engaged listeners on site are expected to cover their own travel and accommodation. A selection of accepted papers will be considered for a forthcoming publication, preferably in a special issue of the Nordic Journal of Human Rights. Submissions and questions should be sent to: rigmor.argren@oru.se with the subject line ‘Covenants@60’.
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