Since the 1970s, women have increasingly made it to the bench. Surprisingly, the proportion of women judges is generally higher in post-conflict countries than in well-established western democracies. Why is this so? Situations of political rupture generally create new opportunity structures; some may favour the entry of women into public positions of power. Post-conflict assistance […]
The project aims to consolidate the Centre on Law & Social Transformation as a leading hub for scholarship on the use of law as an instrument of social change, and to advance high-quality research-based education in this field in Norway and abroad. Background and purpose: We aim to bring together an interdisciplinary team of scholars based […]
We are a group at the University of Bergen that conduct research on children´s rights. Pro Bono is a Latin phrase for professional work and research undertaken voluntarily without payment and for the benefit of the public good. We believe that working for children and young individual’s rights is a particularly important social responsibility. In […]
Abstract: Water scarcity remains a huge problem in many countries, especially where a growing population compete with demands for water from industry and agriculture. In 2010, a United Nations General Assembly resolution recognised the right to safe and clean drinking water as a human right. However, the actual impact of this relatively new human right to […]
The Project The WAIT-project focuses on the temporal aspects of migration and investigates how temporal structures related to irregular migration are shaped by legal regimes, cultural norms and power relationships, and how they shape subjective experiences and life projects. The WAIT-project aims to produce knowledge that meets societal challenges raised by new migration patterns adds […]
Why is homosexuality (encompassing lesbian, gay, bi, trans*/LGBT) more politicized and criminalized in Africa than elsewhere? Can similar politicization of abortion be prevented? And what are the health impacts? This project analyses LGBT and abortion politics in ten African countries: Sudan, Tunisia, Senegal, Malawi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Mozambique, Zambia and South Africa. Development actors have […]
Sexual and Reproductive Rights (SRR) are controversial in most societies. Political polarization has been particularly pronounced on to abortion rights and rights of sexual minorities (LGBTIQ – lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer – persons), but is also evident in issues such as the regulation of contraception, sterilization and adultery, divorce, sexual education and stem […]
Far-reaching processes of juridification are perceived to be at work in Norwegian society and globally, with expanding and more detailed legal regulation, legal regulation of new areas, conflicts and problems increasingly being framed as legal claims, authority shifting from political bodies to courts and other judicial and quasi-judicial bodies, and a development where a judicial way of […]
Project team: Lise Rakner (Project leader), Leonardo Arriola, Siri Gloppen , Kendra Dupuy, Vibeke Wang, Fiona Shen-Bayh, Svein-Erik Helle (post-doctoral fellow) and Lisa-Marie Måseidvåg Selvik (PhD candidate). Time frame: 08/01/2017-08/01/2021 Project description: Are dictators abusing formal institutions in a backlash against democracy, or are formal institutions increasingly restraining the discretionary power of more-or-less democratic politicians? Most African […]
Women on the Bench: The Role of Female Judges in Fragile States
