Since its foundation the Human Rights Program has been offering quality graduate level education to students from various parts of the world, including Central and Eastern Europe, former Soviet Union and the Balkans. In recent years the number of students from Africa, the Americas and Asia has increased considerably. The LL.M. in Human Rights degree is designed for students holding a law degree. The Program aims at training future legal scholars and practitioners in human rights and also serves the already established professionals who wish to add a human rights perspective to their work.
From its inception the main goal of the Human Rights Program has been to provide theoretical and practical training for future scholars and professionals in human rights, with special emphasis on the legal aspects of human rights protection. While the program is interdisciplinary in nature, it is strongly focused on comparative legal analysis. Teaching is designed to incorporate both theoretical perspectives and concrete empirical analyses of the most important questions in human rights. The program offers practical instruction in the specific legal mechanisms and institutional processes which may be used by national human rights organizations to effectively approach human rights issues that transitional and also established democracies might confront. Rigorous and closely monitored coursework provides the tools of analysis, critical reading and writing necessary to enable students to make a significant and lasting contribution both to the rights protection in their home countries and to enforcement of human rights at large. Areas of research and teaching cover – among others – constitutional and international mechanisms for the protection of human rights, with particular focus on the Council of Europe and the United Nations, freedom of expression and freedom of religion, human rights and criminal justice, political rights, non-discrimination, minority protection, human rights in Africa, politics and theories of European integration from a human rights perspective.
The program benefits from a close cooperation with the Open Society Justice Initiative, the Open Society Foundations and the leading Budapest-based NGOs which offer internship opportunities to selected students.
Entry Requirements for the HR LLM Program
In addition to meeting the General CEU Admissions Requirements, applicants to the HR LLM program must also fulfill the Program-specific admission requirements.