Dear readers,

When we, the editorial team, issued the call for the edition of the European Yearbook on Human Rights (EYHR) 2023, we had the idea to provide our readership with the most innovative academic scholarship on how the current human rights framework can be rethought and adapted to address challenges to humanity‘s wellbeing and future. And indeed, the challenges the world and humanity are facing and the issues at stake, require new and innovative approaches in thinking and adapting human rights frameworks – an understanding which also informed the title of this special issue “Rethinking Human Rights”. At a very crucial point in time, the European Yearbook on Human Rights 2023 as a platform for the discussion of important and topical human rights issues aims to prove the value and importance of human rights in addressing the most crucial threats to human wellbeing, including climate change, wars and the weakening of the rule of law and democracy. Contributions by both emerging and renowned scholars shed light on universal and individual human rights issues reflecting the complexities of the current times and showing the potential of human rights frameworks when applied and interpreted in an open way, putting equality, dignity and non-discrimination at the center.

Th is year‘s edition “Rethinking Human Rights” is divided into two parts. The first part is composed of 18 contributions dedicated to the whole spectrum of human rights. As is the tradition of the European Yearbook on Human Rights, the second part is dedicated to crucial developments in the jurisprudence of the European Courts – the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the European Court of Justice (CJEU) – in the field of human and fundamental rights.

The first five contributions are dedicated to climate change and the protection of the environment. Irene Sacchetti , in her contribution “Planetary Justice, Human Rights and the ECHR: Advancing Alternative Onto-Epistemologies to Face Climate-Related Challenges”, analyses human rights law through the lens of planetary justice, a conceptual framework which demands an expanded vision of justice beyond borders, across generations and for nonhumans, questioning the ability of the latter to deal with the intertemporal and interspecies dimensions of climatic harms.