Abstract
This project is part of the researcher's doctoral work, titled 'The role of international (quasi-judicial) mechanisms in ensuring reparation for arbitrary displacement'. This part of the project consists of fieldwork to carry out the empirical part of the doctoral research. This will take place in a local context of forced displacement which has been examined by an international court. Concretely, the fieldwork will consist of interviews with claimants in the case and their representatives, other displaced persons in the context in a comparable situation, and local NGOs, judges and officials working on the issue of forced displacement.
The aim is to provide insight into the effect of the chosen decision on the rights user, measured in terms of the user's perception – in particular, whether and how the international decision facilitated them in realizing their rights (or those of others) on the local level. Due attention will be paid to links with the broader social picture of national reparations processes, social mobilization and/or structural causes of displacement. Ultimately, interviews would aim to identify contextual elements (e.g. social, political, etc.) contributing to the impacts identified. On the basis of the totality of the interviews, some more general, initial insights will then be drawn out as to how these elements may be taken into account by international (quasi-)judicial mechanisms and other actors to ensure/maximize positive effects (e.g. safe return, effective restitution/compensation) in future situations.
The empirical case study method will be adopted, in particular through the use of qualitative, semi-structured interviews with a relatively defined target group in a specific context (i.e. the context of a specific international (quasi-)judicial decision on reparations for arbitrary displacement). In order to shed light on the perspective of rights-users, the target group of the interviews – categorized according to the users' perspective methodology - will be:
1) Rights claimants - i.e. people directly involved in the international claim as plaintiffs, or people in a comparable position who could be affected by the decision - and/or their representatives (e.g. lawyers, NGO representatives);
2) Rights realizers (i.e. parties in a position to help claimants realize their rights, e.g. local officials)
3) Sympathizers (e.g. representatives of NGOs supportive of the claimants and active on related issues)
4) National judges
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