UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE

Former Federal Minister Gerhart Baum was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Faculty of Law at the University of Cologne at a ceremony on 30 January 2024. The award ceremony was organised by the Academy for European Human Rights Protection and took place in the presence of Lord Mayor Henriette Reker, the Rector of the University, Professor Dr Joybrato Mukherjee, and numerous members of the Faculty of Law.

Gerhart Baum, born in 1932, has been a member of the FDP since 1954 and was a member of the German Bundestag from 1972 to 1994. From 1972 to 1978 he was Parliamentary State Secretary and from 1978 to 1982 Federal Minister of the Interior in the social-liberal Federal Government led by Helmut Schmidt. From 1992, he worked for the UN, first as head of the German delegation to the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva and later as UN Special Representative for Human Rights in Sudan. Today he is active with Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

Baum works as a lawyer and has been involved in a number of successful constitutional complaints before the Federal Constitutional Court, for example against the law on combating organised crime (large-scale eavesdropping). Gerhart Baum also successfully lodged a complaint against the North Rhine-Westphalian law on secret online searches of private computers and was one of the complainants against the Data Retention Act. As a lawyer, Gerhart Baum has also represented the victims of the attack during the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich and the Love Parade disaster in Duisburg in 2010.

Rector Professor Dr Joybrato Mukherjee said: "With this honorary doctorate, the university is honouring Gerhart Baum's multifaceted commitment to freedom and civil rights in our country and around the world. He is a role model for our students, also because of his clear words against right-wing extremism."
Professor Dr Bernhard Kempen, Dean of the Faculty of Law, emphasised how rarely the faculty awards honorary doctorates. He emphasised the concept of freedom that Baum always championed, which he sees as rooted in the tradition of political enlightenment: "Growing up, I was influenced by the extent to which Gerhart Baum advocated an idea of freedom that is not restricted to the free market. His commitment to fundamental and human rights is another reason why we will remember his time as Minister of the Interior for a long time."

Between 6 and 8 November 2023, our postdoctoral researchers Dr. Júlia Miklasová, Dr. Paula Rhein-Fischer, and Dr. Cathérine Van de Graaf organised a symposium on "Misappropriation and Human Rights Implosion" at Schloss Herrenhausen in Hanover. VolkswagenStiftung funded and co-organised the event, which was part of the thematic week "Human Rights in Times of Multiple Challenges - Perspectives from Science and Society". The symposium brought together early career and established researchers from around the world and disciplinary background (law, sociology, linguistics, history, political science and IR). The participants discussed the topic from different angles, bringing together their unique scholarly experience and diverse methodological and disciplinary approaches.

During three days of the symposium, six panels examined the topic of misappropriation of human rights through different perspectives in both authoritarian and democratic regimes. The panels critically assessed the notion itself, focused on the key actors involved (ranging from States, religious, conservative groups, NGOs, and transnational networks), the strategies employed, as well as the locus of contestations (from domestic politics, domestic and international courts, up to international diplomacy). The symposium explored the theme through more general lenses and zoomed in on specific cases from across the world. Ultimately, the participants highlighted the implications of the phenomenon of misappropriation of human rights for the future of human rights, society and international relations. 

The conveners presented the video results of the focus groups conducted with young university students from different European countries on the topic of “Good Name of Human Rights? Does it Matter?”. The symposium closed with a keynote address by one of the leading voices on the subject of misappropriation and the implosion of human rights Prof. Katharine Young (Associate Dean for Faculty and Global Programs, Professor, and Dean’s Distinguished Scholar at Boston College Law School) entitled "Human Rights Misappropriation and Legal Form”.

We are grateful for the funding and co-organization of this event to the VolkswagenStiftung.