Auður Tinna Aðalbjarnardóttir, mag.jur. from the Faculty of Law
Auður Tinna Aðalbjarnardóttir studied at Columbia University in the summer of 2015 where she got the idea for her Master’s thesis in law that she finished in the autumn of 2016. “At Columbia I attended the course “The UN and the Challenges of Peacebuilding”. The influence of the UN on countries’ reconstruction after armed conflict and started to wonder if this influence reached into the legal sphere, especially concerning human rights,” says Auður Tinna.
Auður Tinna Aðalbjarnardóttir
"I discovered that the twelve countries I studied were generally unable to satisfy the demands on human rights protection they had set themselves under the influence of the UN."
In her final project she examined the influence of the UN on human rights clauses in constitutions after wars and then also the human rights protection afforded citizens in the countries where the UN has had this influence. “I found it interesting to observe which human rights are featured prominently in constitutions instituted after armed conflict, when the UN has been significantly involved in the process. It became clear that such constitution writing had not been studied to any serious degree from a legal point of view,” Auður Tinna points out.
Auður Tinna’s conclusions show that constitutional assistance by the UN leads to constitutions containing a great deal of human rights, often the same rights and especially many rights that are classified as third generation human rights, among them the right to a healthy environment and the rights of minorities. “Furthermore, I discovered that the twelve countries I studied were generally unable to satisfy the demands on human rights protection they had set themselves under the influence of the UN, especially concerning rights that are not first generation human rights, for example equal rights for men and women and the labour market and general protection for minorities,” she says.
The conclusions demonstrate, according to Auður Tinna, that despite the fact that constitutional change has been accepted as an important part of reconstruction following conflict, rights protection is generally inconsistent with the commitments made in the new constitutions.
Supervisor: Oddný Mjöll Arnardóttir, Professor at the Faculty of Law