Czech Centre for Human Rights and Democratization

The Czech Republic lacks an academic center whose goal would be to conduct an impartial research on human-rights-related topics. Despite of the fact that the Czech Republic often presents itself as a country which values human rights and tries to incorporate them also into its foreign policy, social science research on this topic is not well developed here.

The Czech Centre for Human Rights and Democratization (CCHRD) distinguishes itself from both other non-governmental institutions and  governmental bodies dealing with this area. The Centre represents an independent, academic institution, which is dedicated to analyze human rights from both social science and international law points of view. The existence of such center is very common in most European Union states; in some of these countries there are even more such centers operating. Austria would be a good example of such country.

The Czech Centre for Human Rights and Democratization has been founded to fill this gap and create an independent academic environment for human rights research. The Centre is operating under the aegis of International Institute of Political Science of Masaryk University, and cooperates with academic institutions. Both Faculty of Social Studies and Faculty of Law of the Masaryk University are to be found among partner institutions of the Centre. It also cooperates with non-government institutions and judicial institutions - The Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic, The Supreme Administrative Court of the Czech Republic, or The European Court for Human Rights.