This study was accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Faculty of Law of the Georg-August-University Göttingen (Germany) in July 2020. For this volume, the manuscript has been updated and includes major developments until December 2020.
Professor Anja Seibert-Fohr, Judge at the European Court of Human Rights and former Member of the U.N. Human Rights Committee, gave me the initial idea to write about the law of evidence in international human rights proceedings. I am grateful to her for her advice, comprehensive feedback and the review of the manuscript at various stages of the thesis and to Professor Peter-Tobias Stoll for writing the second review.
I am thankful to Professor Andreas Paulus, Judge at the German Constitutional Court, for inviting me to his doctoral seminar, where I was able to present ideas, concepts and outlines and received great feedback.
A special thank you goes to friends and colleagues for fruitful discussions, proofreading and comments, in particular Katie Barbour, Dr. Tobias Thienel and Professor Asaf Lubin.
I owe gratitude to Brill-Nijhoff, in particular to publisher Lindy Melman for her support and advice.
For countless hours of discussion on ideas and outlines, many pages of proofreading but also for support and motivation on every level, I am deeply indebted to Evgeniya Yushkova.
Finally, I would like to thank my friends and my family, first and foremost my parents, Falk and Sabine Stirner for relentless support of my legal and academic career. This volume is dedicated to them.