On 7 March 2025 at 12:00 CET we will host a conference on “Interpreting Human Rights: Divergent Conceptions and Their Impact in the EU and Iraq” at the Sala de Grados of the Faculty of Law.
Human rights establish universally protected legal goods, ensuring that individuals cannot be treated differently unless justified by a relevant distinction in specific contexts. However, multiple interpretations—such as public utility, free market liberalism, and egalitarianism—often conflict in how these rights are applied, leading to varied conceptions of justice. This conference will explore how these conflicting frameworks affect the implementation of human rights, focusing on both the EU and Iraq.
In the EU, human rights are embedded in robust legal frameworks, yet differing national interpretations of equality, freedom, and public utility lead to legal and policy conflicts, particularly in balancing security with personal freedoms. The Iraq case will examine the challenges of rebuilding human rights post-conflict, where ethnic and sectarian tensions and diverse cultural interpretations complicate the universal application of rights. The session will discuss how reconciling these divergent conceptions is crucial for ensuring justice and equality, and how lessons from the EU’s ongoing human rights debates could inform the development of more unified human rights practices in Iraq.
The conference will have the participation of Dr Marc Abraham Puig Hernández (UAB, expert on human rights), Dr Abdulaziz Ramamdan (Mosul University), and Dr Mohannad Ibrahim Ali Fandi Al-Jubouri (Mosul University).
