Michiel Hoornick

Institution: Geneva Graduate Institute (IHEID)

Period of stay: 14 July - 19 September 2025

Contact: michiel.hoornick@graduateinstitute.ch

https://www.graduateinstitute.ch/other-programmes/michiel-hoornick

Profile: 

Michiel Hoornick is a current PhD candidate in International Law at the Graduate Institute on International and Development Studies in Geneva (IHEID), Switzerland. Previously, he worked as a researcher at the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies in Belgium and as a programme officer at the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion. He also builds on previous experiences at the UNHCR headquarters in Geneva and the Netherlands Permanent Mission to the UN in New York. Michiel holds Master degrees in International and European Law from Tilburg University, the Netherlands and IHEID, Switzerland.

Research Area:

Climate Change and International Human Rights Law

Research Title:

The Climate Crisis and its Effects on International Human Rights Law

Research Outline:

Domestic, regional and global human rights fora have, since the 2010s, increasingly engaged with climate change mitigation. The main rights-based argument used by litigators and activists is that, in failing to mitigate carbon emissions, States also fail to protect their citizens from the negative human rights consequences of climate change. In response to this ‘turn to human rights’ in climate litigation, the academic interest has largely focused on how international human rights law may shape the legal responses to climate change. Less attention has been paid to how these rights-based developments may in turn shape the human rights framework.

In looking at climate change, this dissertation contributes to a growing body of scholarship examining the limitations of international human rights law. International human rights law has been critiqued for its focus on the symptoms of injustice rather than dealing with its structural underlying causes. Human rights are individual in nature, formulated as minimum standards and based on a direct, vertical relationship between the State as the duty-bearer and the individual as the rights-holder. Climate change poses a fundamental challenge to these foundations of the human rights framework. Where climate mitigation requires structural transformations, it raises important questions about whether – and in what ways – it might change international human rights law and potential catalyst for broader systemic change. This research will allow to reflect on whether the human rights framework is able to meet the structural demands posed by the climate crisis – or whether it will remain bound by its traditional limitations.

Publications:

Wouters J. and Hoornick M. November 2023. ‘The Triangle of Human Rights, International Law, and Sustainable Development’ in Siobhán McInerney-Lankford and Robert McCorquodale, the Roles of International Law in Development (OUP).

Marx, A., Pertiwi, S. B., Depoorter, C., Hoornick, M., Mursitama, T. N., Otteburn, K. and Arnakim, L. Y. 2021. ‘What Role for Regional Organisations in Goal-Setting Global Governance? An Analysis of the Role of the EU and ASEAN in the SDGs. Global Public Policy and Governance.

Hoornick, M. 2020. ‘Addressing Statelessness through the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (“ICERD”)’. The Statelessness and Citizenship Review 2 (2): 222–47.

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