Invitation: Workshop on 14 November 2023: Admissibility before UN Treaty Bodies - Challenges and Exceptions

12.10.2023

On 14 November 2023 from 12.15 to 13.45, the second online workshop on strategic litigation before the UN Treaty Bodies will take place.
Boris Wijkström, director of the «Centre Suisse pour la Défense des Droits des Migrantes (CSDM)», will share his experiences in relation to UN Treaty Bodies’ practice on admissibility.

In order for a communication to a UN Treaty Body be examined on the merits, it must first meet various admissibility criteria. These include – for example – the exhaustion of domestic remedies, jurisdiction or the sufficient substantiation of the claim. Across the various UN Treaty Bodies, these admissibility criteria are broadly similar. Drawing on examples from the UN Committee against Torture (CAT) and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC), Boris Wijkström will reflect on and share his experiences in relation to UN Treaty Bodies’ practice on admissibility. He will elaborate on how questions of admissibility, particularly as relating to the exhaustion of domestic remedies and the substantiation of a claim, interact with discretionary domestic remedies which may be pursued in parallel.

Boris Wijkström is the founder and director of the Centre Suisse pour la Défense des Droits des Migrantes (CSDM). Caritas Switzerland will take over the CSDM's mandate from 1 November 2023. Boris Wijkström studied at Stanford University (BA 1996) and George Washington University Law School (JD 1999). He was admitted to the bar in the United States and is a member of the Columbia Bar (Washington DC). Boris Wijkström has practiced law in the US and in Geneva, where he worked for the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the World Organization Against Torture.

Moderation: RAin Dr. Katja Achermann, LL.M. (Cantab), Postdoc FNS Université de Fribourg, Lecturer for Public International Law at the University of St. Gallen, legal advisor of the Focal Point for Strategic Litigation of humanrights.ch.

Target audience

Lawyers, NGOs, individuals concerned and advocacy groups, as well as researchers interested in strategic litigation before national and international courts for the protection of fundamental and human rights. The workshop will be held in English, there will be no translation into other languages.