Greetings from Brussels! After spending an incredible week in Paris, we are back in Brussels for our final week here. Our European Security course has wrapped up, and this week we have started our Human Rights course with Dr. Fabry. After spending the past (almost) two months discussing security and European institutions in lecture and at our site visits, I think it will be refreshing to have a new topic, human rights, to round out our general understanding and analysis of European current and past issues.

Yesterday, our lectures focused on a general introduction to the topic of human rights by defining what constitutes a human right, the emergence of international governance on human rights as well as global and regional human rights institutions. After laying that foundation, today we discussed the role that human rights plays in foreign policy considerations and actions, both in the European Union as well as the international system as a whole.

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