We focus on the right not to live in poverty. This is a topic we consider of utmost importance, with poverty being intrinsically linked to a great variety of severe human rights violations on an individual and structural level. While we continue to define our strategy in this area, our primary interim aim is to ensure that poverty, its causes and effects, are more readily anchored in the human rights lexicon than at present.

Current initiatives

Victims of historic child abuse: already upon CEHRI’s foundation, we started exploring avenues to supporting individuals who have been victims of systemic historic child abuse in Austria. To date, many of Hesse individuals have not been able to access justice or have their victim status recognized in the law, inter alia resulting in persistent situations of poverty and/or social marginalization. National practices in Austria maintain structures which make it almost impossible for victims to access justice, be it via the criminal law, civil law or administrative law avenues. CEHRI has identified a number of pilot cases and is supporting these individuals, partly by offering legal support in domestic proceedings, partly before the European Court of Human Rights. While we are unable to provide legal support for the majority of cases, our action questions the existing legal situation and aims to sustainably change the systemic obstacles barring victims of historic child abuse to duly and indiscriminately make use of their right to access justice.