Research
National human rights action planning
Azadeh is currently working on a study called “Thirty years of National Human Rights Action Planning". The first phase involved an extensive longitudinal textual analysis of all NHRAPs, developed between 1994-2024 and available in English. The second phase which is funded by Policy Support Fund is on Building the First European Network on National Human Rights Action Planning as a Route to Policy Impact.
Azadeh is a world leading researcher on NHRAPs. She has already conducted extensive works on evaluating the impacts of NHRAPs across the world and their future directions published in the
leading human rights journals. Her track record of exceptional and pioneering contributions in the area of human rights planning is evidenced by not only her articles but also her monograph, “National Human Rights Action Planning” (OUP, 2018) which is the first ever volume dedicated to this area. This book deals with human rights action planning, as a largely under-researched area, from theoretical, doctrinal, empirical, and practical perspectives, and as such, provides the most comprehensive studies of human rights planning to date. At the theoretical level, by advancing a novel general theory of human rights planning, it offers an alternative to the traditional state-centric model of planning. This new theory contains four sub-theories: contextual, substantive, procedural, and analytical ones. At the doctrinal level, by conducting a textual analysis of core human rights conventions, it reveals the scope and nature of the states' obligation to adopt a plan of action for implementing human rights. At the empirical level, a cross-case analysis of national human rights action plans of 53 countries is conducted exploring the major problems of these plans in different phases of planning and uncovering the underlying causes of these problems. At the practical level, this volume sets out how these plans should be developed and implemented, how they can be best monitored by international human rights bodies, and how to maximize their effectiveness.
With discussions bridging human rights theory and practice and development discourse, this book is a useful resource for a wide range of audiences, from academics of different disciplines (law, human rights, social policy, political science, political philosophy, legal philosophy, development studies, planning studies, socio-legal studies) to governments, human rights practitioners, and the UN human rights bodies.
The Human Right to Environment
Azadeh is currently working on a series of article on the right to environment. Her first article was on the scope, nature and content of the human right to environment. It is entitled "A New Theoretical Model of the Right to Environment and its Practical Advantages" published at Oxford Human Rights Law Review in December 2023. A New Theoretical Model of the Right to Environment and its Practical Advantages
Her second article is on the right to environment based approach to climate litigation which is currently under review.