Ph.D. Canidate

University of Geneva - Law Faculty

Ilya.Sobol@etu.unige.ch

Ilya Sobol is a PhD candidate in International Law at the Law Faculty of the University of Geneva, Department of Public International Law and International Organization. He is responsible for Track 1 of the project and provides research support for Track 2. His thesis, ‘The suitability test in international human rights law and restriction of rights in counter-terrorism’, seeks to clarify the relationship between the rights’ limiting measures and their declared aims within the broader notion of proportionality.

He holds an LLM from the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights (summa cum laude) and a bachelor's degree in International Law from International University “MITSO” (Minsk, Belarus).

Prior to joining the project, Ilya Sobol worked as a researcher with the Belarusian Helsinki Committee, where he addressed economic and social rights and authored a report on the right to housing and homelessness in Belarus. He also worked as an intern for the Law and Policy Office of the International Commission of Jurists, and as a volunteer collaborator for the International Society of Military Law and the Law of War.

His research has addressed the notion of 'group membership' in counter-terrorism and armed conflict, restrictions on terrorism-related forms of expression, the concept of 'effectiveness' in counter-terrorism and its relation to principles of human rights law, and it is now focused on the 'suitability' or 'rational connection' part of the proportionality test in human rights law as a requirement of rationality for rights’ limiting measures.