Dear readers,

When we, the editorial team, issued the call for the edition of the European Yearbook on Human Rights (EYHR) 2023, we had the idea to provide our readership with the most innovative academic scholarship on how the current human rights framework can be rethought and adapted to address challenges to humanity‘s wellbeing and future. And indeed, the challenges the world and humanity are facing and the issues at stake, require new and innovative approaches in thinking and adapting human rights frameworks – an understanding which also informed the title of this special issue “Rethinking Human Rights”. At a very crucial point in time, the European Yearbook on Human Rights 2023 as a platform for the discussion of important and topical human rights issues aims to prove the value and importance of human rights in addressing the most crucial threats to human wellbeing, including climate change, wars and the weakening of the rule of law and democracy. Contributions by both emerging and renowned scholars shed light on universal and individual human rights issues reflecting the complexities of the current times and showing the potential of human rights frameworks when applied and interpreted in an open way, putting equality, dignity and non-discrimination at the center.

Th is year‘s edition “Rethinking Human Rights” is divided into two parts. The first part is composed of 18 contributions dedicated to the whole spectrum of human rights. As is the tradition of the European Yearbook on Human Rights, the second part is dedicated to crucial developments in the jurisprudence of the European Courts – the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the European Court of Justice (CJEU) – in the field of human and fundamental rights.

The first five contributions are dedicated to climate change and the protection of the environment. Irene Sacchetti , in her contribution “Planetary Justice, Human Rights and the ECHR: Advancing Alternative Onto-Epistemologies to Face Climate-Related Challenges”, analyses human rights law through the lens of planetary justice, a conceptual framework which demands an expanded vision of justice beyond borders, across generations and for nonhumans, questioning the ability of the latter to deal with the intertemporal and interspecies dimensions of climatic harms.

Dear readers,

We are living in a state of multiple crises: an obvious but still neglected climate crisis; a health crisis with an ongoing pandemic; an economic and financial crisis closely related to an energy crisis; and a human security crisis reflected in the many violent conflicts, new and long-lasting, around the globe. Responses to crises are often emotional, populist and fear-induced. In order to maintain and solidify their power and pursue their interests, governments tend to use crises to create a permanent state of exception, legitimating measures that under ‘normal’ circumstances might have been unthinkable. On the other hand, crises unsettle people – people lose trust in political systems, the media or the rule of law in general. Human rights and violations thereof are at the core of these dynamics; ultimately, crises are a symptom of the fragility of the human rights system, and the disregard by states of rights commonly agreed upon by the international community. At the same time, the doubts about institutions, democratic systems and the rule of law are also an expression of a lack of trust in human rights. What we need, thus, is to regain control over the human rights discourse, in order to be able to respond profoundly to the violation of human rights, and to re-establish trust in them, and the system established to implement them, by showing that human rights are more than just written words. As a platform for the discussion of important and topical human rights issues, the European Yearbook on Human Rights 2022 aims to make a contribution towards ensuring that future responses to crises not only pay respect to human rights but are rooted in them. Differently from the previous editions, which were dedicated to specific topics (the 2021 edition was dedicated to ‘Human Rights in Times of a Pandemic’ , and the 2020 edition to the rights of the child), the EYHR 2022 takes a broad approach to various topical human rights issues in Europe and beyond.