Both the Department of Law and the Department of Political Science offer various courses on the subject of human rights.

Master Human Rights

Update: New Program Regulations for the M.A. Human Rights from Winter Semester 2026/27.

The interdisciplinary, English-taught M.A. in Human Rights is aimed at national and international applicants with a Bachelor’s degree in the legal sciences, social sciences or humanities, and a passion for human rights, ideally rooted in previous experience in that area.

Detailed information on the program, application procedure, and lecturers can be found on the program’s website.

Homepage M.A. Human Rights

Human Rights Clinic

–Call for Applications– The CHREN Human Rights Clinic is inviting applications from students interested in participating in a project with our practice partner Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte e.V. (GFF) during the summer semester. The focus of the project will be an analysis of the practice of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) with regards to the right to housing. Further details can be found in the Call for Applications.

The CHREN Human Rights Clinic is an initiative launched by the Chair for Public Law, Public International Law and Human Rights (Professor Dr. Dr. Patricia Wiater) and the Center for Human Rights Erlangen-Nürnberg (CHREN) in the winter semester 2024. It continues the work of the former FAU Human Rights Clinic and of the former Human Rights & Business Clinic.

The Clinic is an innovative teaching format that offers talented students the opportunity to develop their skills by working on real-life cases and projects in International Human Rights Law. Under the supervision of experts from human rights practice and human rights researchers at FAU, students will conduct research and provide high-quality legal advice to lawyers, NGOs, and other partners from legal practice.

The official launch event of the CHREN Human Rights Clinic with a two-day workshop on “Human Rights in Practice” took place on November 15 and 16, 2024.

The 2021/22 report has been published in book form by FAU University Press. It is available in full text here (only in German).

After the surprisingly abrupt withdrawal of international troops from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021, the country fell back under Taliban rule with the capture of Kabul on 15 August 2021. Many of the local forces working for the Bundeswehr and other German organizations were not evacuated or were evacuated far too late and were stuck in Afghanistan, where they were threatened and persecuted by the Taliban as “collaborators.” The project of the first cycle of the FAU Human Rights Clinic started in the winter semester 2021/22 under the title “Human Rights Assessment of the Afghanistan Evacuation.” In cooperation with PRO ASYL as a practice partner, the team of five law and political science students is dedicated to the legal and factual issues surrounding the reception of local forces.

In addition to independent research work, the HRC program includes specific skills workshops with international speakers, in which organizational (“Best Practices in Clinical Work,” “DO’ and DON’Ts in Group Research”), content-related (“Afghanistan – Human Rights, Local Forces, Legal Practice”), and methodological skills are taught (“Skills Workshop – Interviews”). In addition, the students conducted interviews with lawyers, employees of human rights organizations and affected local forces.

The result of the project is the report “Fundamental and human rights-compliant organization of refugee reception.”

The topic of the FAU Human Rights Clinic 2022/23 was Climate Change & Flight: Protection for “Climate Refugees.” In cooperation with the German Institute for Human Rights as a practice partner, the students wrote an expert report on the question of how people fleeing the negative effects of climate change can find protection. What forms of protection already exist in national and international asylum and refugee law? Are these forms of protection sufficient? What innovative approaches could close existing gaps?

The report will soon be published in book form by FAU University Press.

If you have any questions, please contact the coordinator of the Human Rights Clinic, Jonathan Kießling.

Human Rights and Business Clinic

The FAU Human Rights and Business Clinic (HRB Clinic) brings together students and academics at FAU with partner organizations to work on applied research projects. Led by doctoral researchers of the International Doctorate Programme “Business and Human Rights: Governance Challenges in a Complex World,” the Clinic serves the dual function of helping students harness research skills to deliver timely and impactful projects in partnership with an external organization and provides academic research capacities to the partner organization. By bringing academia and practice closer together, the Clinic aims to deliver mutually beneficial and impact-oriented research.

Homepage HRB Clinic

Human Rights Talks

The “FAU Human Rights Talks” are an innovative teaching format that Professor Wiater has been offering since the 2019 summer semester. In the talks, the participants discuss current issues of fundamental and human rights protection from different perspectives.

Depending on the topic, the Human Rights Talks are held in English or German.

The Human Rights Talks are open to law students of all study phases, students of the Master’s program Human Rights, Ersamus students, and interested students of other subjects.

Further information can be found on the homepage of our CHREN Member Prof. Dr. Dr. Patricia Wiater.