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At the end of January, Hurmur (), a three-year research and development project will commence, with the goal of raising research capacities in Estonia and the Baltics, and help understand the changing meaning of human rights in today’s world. This is the largest project in law research in Estonia – the European research funding programme Horizon 2020 decided to support it with more than 1 million Euros.

The research will focus on new challenges regarding human rights (e.g. right for Internet, democracy, or anonymous commentary) for and human rights universality. For example, the project will research the values the cultural space is used to, but which might not be acceptable in the rest of the world. The author of the idea behind the project and its manager, associate professor of human rights at Tallinn University Mart Susi believes, that the ideas that come from Estonia might influence the understanding of new human rights in Europe as well as the whole world, and also seek answers to “whether the time of human rights has passed.”

During the project, an international basic rights research centre will be established at Tallinn University. In addition, the East European Yearbook of Human Rights, a magazine with an international audience and editorial board, will be launched. Tallinn University will also host a doctoral school on human rights.

Tallinn University is the leading partner in this project, the other partners are the Danish Human Rights Institute and the Walther Schücking Institute for International Law at Kiel University. The Walther-Schuecking-Institut is the oldest international public law research institute, and the Danish Human Rights Institute is regarded as the best research institutes in human rights. According to Mart Susi, such partners and the help from the Horizon 2020 programme will make it a strong possibility that this project will reach its development and research goals, and make them institutionally sustainable.

The project will be kicked off on January 29^th at 09:30 at room M-648 of Tallinn University. Among the guests will be professors Andreas von Arnaud and Kerstin Odendahl from Walter-Schuecking-Institut, and researchers Hans-Otto Sano and Marie-Juul Petersen from the Danish Human Rights Institute.