News and Events 2026

On 7th September, Anne Oloo defended her dissertation titled, “Algorithmic Accountability and Human Rights: Towards an Inclusive Framework for Social Media Obligations”. Her dissertation brings together scholarship on algorithmic accountability, human rights law, and the obligations of multinational corporations, while challenging the predominantly Global North focus of existing debates. Drawing on African human rights frameworks and using Kenya as a case illustration, Anne develops a framework for algorithmic human rights accountability that responds to structural power imbalances, state repression, corporate responsibility, and the distinctive role social media platforms play in contemporary public life.We are very proud to celebrate this milestone with you. 

Dr. Oloo was supervised by Professor dr Wouter Vandenhole. Her PhD Commission members were Prof Dr Gamze ERDEM TÜRKELLİ and Prof Dr Catherine Van de Heyning. The jury also included Prof dr Eva Lievens Prof. dr George Ogola and Dr Peggy Valcke. 

Dr. Oloo will soon be starting work on her FWO Post-Doctoral Project VIRAL. 

Dr Bram J D. of Tampere University joined us to introduce “slow erasure,” a framework developed through long-term ethnographic research and relationships in Palestine. His research examines how settler-colonial violence can operate through accumulated practices including restrictions on movement, fragmentation of land, imprisonment, injury, and the suppression of knowledge and identity. An essential caution accompanied the language of slowness: violence is not “slow” to those living through it. What appears incremental or less visible from a distance may be experienced as continuous precarity, alongside abrupt and devastating assaults. Pace and visibility depend on positionality and the politics of witnessing. Slow erasure therefore draws attention not only to the accumulation of harm, but also to the processes through which that harm is rationalised, normalised and denied. It asks us to examine how the boundaries of what appears acceptable can shift over time and what role law may play in either challenging or reinforcing that process.The session left us reflecting on a pressing question for law and development research: how can law respond to structural violence when its own categories prevent it from seeing the full pattern?

The session was organised by Maha Abdallah. Learn more about Dr De Smet’s work here.​

Professor Surya Deva, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to development, delivered the lecture From Conflicts to a Peace Economy: The Role of the Right to Development. The event commemorated Professor Koen De Feyter and explored how the right to development can support a transition from war economies towards peace, human rights and sustainable development.

This online workshop examined universities’ responsibilities as economic actors and emerging human rights duty-bearers. Scholars and procurement practitioners discussed transparency, human rights due diligence and responsible public procurement.

The first stakeholders’ meeting of the Just Bonding project, Filiation: Between Borders and Rights, was held at the University of Antwerp’s City Campus.

Visit the Just Bonding project website · View the programme

The Re-Empower project presented research on child marriage in Tanzania, including the role of customs and traditions and the relevance of climate-change law. Professor Sofie Vandevoogel of Ghent University also discussed the validation of research findings through a Ugandan case study.

Read more · View the programme

This public session combined personal testimony with analysis of three prominent climate cases involving Belgium, ING and TotalEnergies. Speakers also considered the International Court of Justice’s climate advisory opinion and its implications for European and national climate litigation.

Organized with the Chair of African Legal Studies at the University of Bayreuth, this workshop introduced early-career researchers to critical and decolonial approaches to socio-legal research on human rights and sustainable development in Africa.

Professor Tanja Aalberts presented work co-authored with Juliana Santos de Carvalho on the drafting of the international deep-sea Mining Code. The seminar examined how law constructs the deep seabed as a governable resource and “mankind” as its supposed beneficiary.

Dr Yasmine Luhandjula and Dr Héctor Herrera discussed the International Court of Justice’s climate advisory opinion and its consequences for state responsibility, climate justice and future environmental governance.

The Law and Development Research Group and Birzeit University’s Muwatin Institute concluded their Winter School on the international order's failures and the possibilities for emancipatory and decolonial futures. Lectures, discussions and institutional visits addressed self-determination, genocide, corporate complicity, repression and the future of human rights.

Students, scholars and practitioners from Palestine, Belgium and elsewhere participated in an intensive programme organized by Birzeit University and the University of Antwerp. The programme included visits to the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court and the European Parliament.

Professor Pedro Mouallem presented Powerful Yet Constrained: Legal Foundations of Central Banking in Brazil Across Three Crises. His research examined how legal reforms expanded the power of Brazil’s central bank while maintaining its dependence on private financial interests.