News & Events

On Tuesday 6^th October 2025, the second edition of the Online School on Human Rights came to a close. The focus of the School this year was on ‘Rights in Europe: The Risks and Impact of Authoritarianism’.

The 40 participants on the School were selected from over 450 applications and represented over 20 countries and a variety of academic and professional backgrounds.

The Online School on Human Rights was organised by the Ghent University’s Eureast Platform, the Irish Centre for Human Rights (University of Galway), the Elena Bonner Human Rights School and supported by the Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Uppsala University and the University of Groningen.

The planning for the School was funded by an ENLIGHT+ grant, bringing ENLIGHT partners together to design the curriculum and protocols for participation.

The 2025 School was co-funded by the EU funded project ‘The Eastern Partnership Civil Society Facility’ and the Eastern Academic Alliance project ‘Science at Risk’.

Over six weeks, participants attended substantive interactive lectures on democracy, rights implementation, ESC rights, digital rights, gender and sexuality rights, climate justice, states of emergency, justice and accountability, critical approaches to rights and a methodological workshop.

The School ended with eight groups presenting on a diverse range of timely topics at the closing ceremony, including migration narratives and surveillance, transgender healthcare, media censorship and disinformation, climate change, indigenous peoples and humanitarian action.