Dr. Hossamedden M. Al-Din, Associate Professor of Private Law at the Faculty of Sharia and Law at Islamic University of Gaza, participated in the international conference “Deeper Concepts of Human Rights Accountability”, held in Brussels, Belgium, from 19–21 November 2025.
In collaboration with Dr Abdulrahman Al-Astal of KU Leuven, Belgium, Dr Al-Din presented a joint research paper titled “Deepening Legal Accountability in the Digital Sphere: Rethinking Freedom of Expression on Social Media”.
The conference marked the conclusion of the research project “Future Proofing Human Rights: Developing Deeper Forms of Accountability”, funded and conducted in partnership among several Belgian universities, including Ghent University, the University of Antwerp, Hasselt University, and the Université libre de Bruxelles. The event brought together scholars from law, socio-legal studies, criminology and political science.
The conference examined evolving understandings of human rights violations, the allocation of duties to protect those rights, and mechanisms for ensuring meaningful accountability amid contemporary challenges such as digital technology and artificial intelligence. Discussions were structured around five key themes: change, knowledge, duties, harm and reparation.
The paper presented by Dr Al-Din and Dr Al-Astal addressed the accountability crisis in digital spaces, critically assessing existing legal frameworks that rely heavily on voluntary transparency while failing to confront algorithmic bias ; particularly against Arabic and Palestinian content. The research compared regulatory models in the United States, the European Union and Palestine, identifying a significant gap between formal rights and effective enforcement.
The authors proposed a new framework termed “Thick Legal Accountability” (TLA), which seeks to move digital platforms beyond their characterisation as neutral intermediaries and instead subject them to enforceable legal obligations. The model advocates mandatory algorithmic oversight and culturally informed human review mechanisms to better safeguard human rights, particularly for marginalised communities.