Founded in 1985, the Lyon Human Rights Institute (IDHL) welcomes around a hundred students a year within UCLy. Behind the Institute’s technical and specialist courses is a team of teaching staff and a network of partners, including international and European institutions and a large number of NGOs in France and other countries.
IDHL has an intercultural dimension and welcomes students from France and countries right around the world. International students make up almost half of the student population. The teaching delivered reflects this diversity in the range of topics covered.
IDHL also boasts an extensive network of former students, with 1,800 alumni spread across five continents.
The Institute keeps abreast of the major challenges facing contemporary global society: globalisation and identity conflict, violence and reconciliation processes, new models of development and the legal ethics. This means that IDHL can provide training courses for professionals and specialists who wish to develop their knowledge and technical skills in the field of human rights issues.
This institute is part of the Catholic University of Lyon (UCLy) that "is geographically located in the heart of the city, at a crossroads, at a "confluence", and this geographical location is a good illustration of UCLy's university project: it involves creating a dialogue between the disciplines as well as opening up education to contemporary society and the challenges that characterize it: challenges related to digital development and the resulting challenges for the understanding of the "human"; challenges related to the dialogue of cultures and to globalization; environmental challenges to which all our students are very sensitive and attentive."