PhD Student Visiting from Croatia

During the first week of May, the Faculty of Law welcomed Agensa Fetai, a PhD student from the University of Zagreb, Croatia. Ms. Fetai is writing her PhD dissertation on human trafficking and children in North Macedonia, and she was particularly interested in learning about the Norwegian Children’s House model and how it is implemented in Norway. We contacted Barnehuset (The Children’s House), who kindly took the time to welcome Ms. Fetai and provide her with valuable information.

While Ms. Fetai was visiting, we also organized a joint research group meeting between the Children’s Law Group and the Crime Control and Security Law Group. Nathalie Ottosson, a PhD student at the Faculty of Law (UiT), served as Ms. Fetai’s main contact during her stay in Tromsø and acted as a liaison between the research groups. She took the initiative to organize and lead the joint meeting. During the meeting, Ms. Fetai presented the challenging topic of her research to members of both groups. Her project is currently in its early stages, and she received several helpful suggestions regarding research methods and potential directions for further development.

It was a pleasure to have Ms. Fetai with us, and we hope to welcome her back in the future!

Jurisconsult of the European Court of Human Rights visits Faculty of Law at UiT

On 4 April 2025 the Jurisconsult of the European Court of Human Rights, Anna Austin, visited the UiT Faculty of Law. The Jurisconsult is a leading position at the Registry of the European Court of Human Rights, responsible for assisting the Court in ensuring the quality and consistency of its case-law. Ms Austin gave a talk about the Court’s Knowledge Sharing platform, the use of research in the Court’s work, and the Court’s dialogue with national judicial systems and academic institutions.

ECHR Jurisconsult Anna Austin 

Anna Austin has worked at the Council of Europe for 30 years, first as a lawyer at the European Commission of Human Rights and later at the European Court of Human Rights. Ms Austin served as Deputy Jurisconsult from 2015 to 2020 when she was appointed Jurisconsult of the Court. As Jurisconsult, she worked to develop and launch in 2022 the Knowledge Sharing platform, which has revolutionised access to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and Council of Europe standards.

What is the ECHR Knowledge Sharing Platform?

The ECHR Knowledge Sharing platform provides access to comprehensive and up-to-date information on the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights. This information is supplemented by references to the relevant international and Council of Europe standards as well as academic publications. The Knowledge Sharing platform is a very useful tool for scholars and students doing research on European human rights law.

Tasks of the Directorate of the Jurisconsult

Among the other tasks of the directorate of the Jurisconsult are providing information on the case-law to members of the Court as well as external audiences, conducting research on ECHR case-law and on international and comparative law, facilitating dialogue with national courts and exchanges with the Council of Europe bodies and academic institutions.

Relevant Elective Law Courses at UiT

Are you interested in human rights? JUR-3615 European Human Rights is an elective subject at master degree level at UiT Faculty of Law. Other relevant elective subjects are JUR-3617 Barns menneskerettigheter (in Norwegian), JUR-3620 International law and armed conflict, and JUR-3626 International Criminal Law, Atrocity Crimes, and Transitional Justice.

New Book on Children's Vulnerability

An international collaboration between children's rights researchers has resulted in a newly published anthology on children's vulnerability viewed in a legal context. Leader of the research group for Child Law Professor Trude Haugli and Associate Professor Mona Martnes from the Faculty of Law at UiT have led the book project as editors.

The anthology has an overarching scientific focus on the concept of vulnerability as understood from a Northwestern European perspective. There has already been done some research on vulnerability in relation to childhood and children's rights, but the contributors to the book identified a gap in the research on vulnerability within a legal context. In this book, they explore more deeply what vulnerability entails, from primarily legal perspectives. 

Trude and Mona have answered some questions about the book and the collaborative and editorial work that was done prior to the book’s launch.

Why did you choose to focus on the concept of vulnerability within children's rights perspectives?

Vulnerability is a very exciting concept that is often taken for granted. Vulnerability is used in various ways, and sometimes to mask other arguments or contribute to stigmatisation. At the same time, vulnerability is an important justification for special rights for certain groups, such as children. It is therefore important to analyse the concept in a children's rights context.

The book is a product of a conference organised by the Children's Rights Research Group in 2022. Can you elaborate on how the book as a collaborative project took shape, from idea to execution?

The Children's Rights Group at the Faculty of Law (UiT) was awarded significant funding in 2020 from the Research Council of Norway for a four-year project on children's right to attain the highest standard of health, which is usually referred to as children's right to health. The overarching goal of the project was to contribute to improving and securing children's rights in health matters, by balancing children's right to participation and the right to protection, and balancing parents' rights and duties and children's rights against the state's responsibilities. Nationally, children's rights have largely been understood and approached from a practical basis, which there has been a great need for. However, we believed that it was time to try to develop a theoretical model for understanding children's right to health within a Nordic welfare state perspective.

After identifying some theories that we found relevant, we decided to work with vulnerability theories, based on Martha Fineman's understanding of this phenomenon. The new approach we took was to try to link the theory to an understanding of children's rights. We invited key children's rights researchers to the conference titled "Rethinking Vulnerability from a Children’s Rights Perspective".

Even before the conference, we had received drafts from the participants, and we had presented the idea to the publishing house Universitetsforlaget and received a preliminary green light from them to go ahead with the book.

The texts turned out to fit well together, and after many rounds of reading each other's texts, anonymous peer reviews, improvements based on feedback, and so on, the final version of the book was ready. The editorial work naturally involved reading texts, keeping track of progress, coordinating processes, and not least, having a consistent red thread through the introduction and the concluding chapter.

What do you hope the book will contribute to?

Further discussions on the use of the concept of vulnerability in children's rights. Perhaps it can also inspire looking at other fundamental premises for legal discussions within this area of law, so that we can continue to develop children's rights. 

Through the book process, we have also become even more acquainted with prominent children's rights researchers and have strengthened our international network. By writing the book in English, we have the opportunity to reach out to international research communities, participate in debates internationally, and thereby make our research group even more visible.

Trude Haugli  –  Professor