Citizenship, Human and Emerging Rights, Gender and immigration

Citizenship, Human and Emerging Rights, Gender and Immigration. There are five major lines of active work on citizenship: immigration; new emerging rights; gender policy, particularly gender violence; e-voting and political participation; and business and human rights.

Particularly relevant is the research and transfer of knowledge in gender issues. On the latter topic there is a consolidated collaboration with the URV Observatory on Gender Equality, concretised through a number of initiatives, such as drawing up and evaluating the Equality Plan, participating in drafting the URV Harassment Protocol and organising specialised workshops. In the transfer of knowledge area, the gender policy line, the e-voting line and the business and human rights line have all been gaining strength in recent years. Particularly, the Group is consultant on gender violence for various stakeholders, from the European Parliament right down to city councils and universities; the Group also advise them on the creation of action protocols and educational activities targeting specific segments of the population. In the area of business and human rights, the group is participating in the process of drawing up the Catalonian Business and Human Rights Strategy and expects to continue doing so over the next few years. On the topic of e-voting, since 2003 members of the research group have agreed to lead five competitive R&D projects (one of which is currently active) and have worked with various public and private, local and international institutions interested in e-voting. One member of the group is participating as an expert in the Ad-hoc Committee on E-voting created in the Council of Europe to update Recommendation (2004)11 on e-voting. Furthermore, the Group has participated in various international missions run by the European Union, the Council of Europe, OSCE/ODIHR and the OAS.

Research in this area covers a variety of legal and interdisciplinary human rights topics and areas:

• Business, human rights and the environment
• Electronic voting 
• Emerging rights
• Environmental Defenders
• Gender issues (violence, policies, politics, representation, equality)
• Human rights
• Immigration
• Indigenous rights
• Justice and human rights
• New technologies law 
• Procedural rights: access to information, participation in decision-making, access to justice and environmental assessments
• Smart Cities