International conventions now protect a wide range of human rights: civil and political rights, economic, social and cultural rights, and the rights of vulnerable groups, such as women, children and the disabled. International organs - courts and supervisory bodies - help ensure that states comply with their commitments. Many see this as major positive developments. At the same time, states worry that their freedom is restricted in areas traditionally part of the national domain. The international organs have also interpreted the conventions in ways that expand the international obligations. These developments raise both descriptive and normative challenges, especially concerning the democratic legitimacy of human rights courts and supervisory bodies.

The project brought together legal scholars, social scientists, and political philosophers to address three central puzzles concerning these challenges to human rights conventions:

• the motivations of states when they enter into the conventions,
• the effects of these conventions on states, and, in light of these findings,
• whether such conventions are normatively legitimate.

Particular attention was paid to:

• The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)
• The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)
• The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)
• The ILO Convention No. 169 concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries.

Group members have addressed various aspects of the three main questions through intensive and regular interdisciplinary exchange, seminars, and working groups on topics ranging from particular court cases to methodological challenges. Each member of the research team has prepared various publications; many of us have also participated at various scholarly gatherings. Among the joint outcomes is also a book series that the Co-Directors have agreed with Cambridge University Press: a collection of five volumes of findings based on the research group, edited by various research group members. In addition, we will publish two special issues of journals.

We are grateful to CAS that we will be able to fund final author workshops for several of the book projects during the fall of 2010, thus continuing the research beyond the confines of the academic year of 2009-10. In addition, several members have contributed to public debates in radio and in print media on the topic of state ratification of human rights.

The excellent staff at CAS made every effort to ensure that members of the research group could devote their undivided attention to research; the staff provided housing and common lunches with aplomb, and ensured an exceptionally speedy handling of requests ranging from instalment of new computer programmes over seminar room bookings to travel reimbursement. In addition to the professionalism and energy of the actual personnel, it seems clear that further factors contribute to the excellent administrative support, including the defined single mission of the administration to foster research excellence, executed by a relatively small team located on the premises.