Courses 2026-2027

This certificate course offered by the Human Rights Centre of the University for Peace looks at the linkages between the environment, development, and human rights and examines how these linkages may assist efforts to protect both the environment and human rights. The course uses an interdisciplinary approach and focuses on the educational, legal and social aspects of this relationship. The course will address climate change, environmental degradation, mitigation and adaptation, human mobility, human rights based approaches to the environment, loss and damage, and the environment and human rights in the light of the post-2015 development agenda. Under the umbrella of international law and environmental sciences, the course will pay special attention to hybrid legal approaches on the environment and human rights, including as a potential strengthening and dispersing method to address the nexus of environment, human rights and mobility.

The course is based on a dynamic pedagogy including reading materials, video clips, case studies, and interactive webinars with the instructor.

This certificate course organised by the Human Rights Centre of the UN-mandated University for Peace introduces participants to Child Rights and Development. The first eighteen years of a child’s life encompass a wide range of capacities and vulnerabilities. ‘Children’ in any society, constitute the most vulnerable group who need a nurturing environment and protection for the full realization of their rights and capabilities. Children are critical agents of change and they are a responsibility of the family, society as much as that of the state. Comprehending the need for a consistent and harmonized approach, international agencies and national governments have developed and implemented a variety of child development and child protection measures.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (SDGs) envisages a world of universal respect for human rights and human dignity; a world which invests in its children and in which every child grows up free from violence and exploitation; a world in which every woman and girl enjoys full gender equality and all legal, social and economic barriers to their empowerment have been removed. A just, equitable, tolerant, open and socially inclusive world in which, the needs of the most vulnerable are met.


This e-learning course on child rights focuses on child protection issues, which will look closely at the entire gamut of international legal framework on the rights of children and protection of children with a particular focus on child rights violations and remedies globally. The course will explore legal, humanitarian, development and other strategies for understanding and advancing the human rights of children.

This certificate course offered by the Human Rights Center of the University for Peace will provide participants with a comprehensive outlook on the interface between business, development, and human rights. Business corporations have always been, some may argue even before the advent of the nation-state system, important drivers of economic growth. At the same time, businesses have also often been accused of engaging in activities which may lead to violations of human rights of different stakeholders. This has enabled strong critiques of their role in the overall development process. This e-learning course will critically examine this business-development-human rights nexus with a particular focus on case studies from around the world. Several questions such as the human rights obligations of businesses, the manner in which human rights are affected by businesses including during armed conflicts, the specific linkages with the right to environment and labour rights and the ever elusive solution for accountability will be examined. We will also look at the idea of corporate social responsibility within the right to development debate. A major part of the course will be devoted to an analysis of the successes and challenges of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which were endorsed by the Human Rights Council of UN in 2011. Participants will also learn the tools for conducting human rights and stakeholder identification and designing due diligence policies.

This course introduces participants to the diverse, yet interlinked, issues related to the trans-boundary movement of people and how this affects human rights. It starts off by exploring the notion of 'forced migration', and distinguishing it from various other notions that are used to refer to the phenomenon of trans-boundary movement of people. In particular, it looks at how different people have different access to other states. Is there a right to be allowed into an other state? If so, under what conditions? The course then moves on to look at the specific regimes protecting, in varying degrees, different groups of vulnerable people. First, it gives an overview of the international law of refugee protection. Second, it looks at how human rights apply, or not, in the case of undocumented migrants. Third, it covers the protection of victims of human trafficking and the policies in place against the smuggling of people. Fourth, it considers whether migrants in general are entitled to enjoy specific social rights. Finally, it takes a closer look at the human rights dimension of border control, in particular in cases where people die in their attempts to reach the countries of their destination.