As of October 2017, a group of researchers led by Prof. Dr. Nina Kolleck will investigate the impact of international secretariats on the negotiation of international treaties. The study will be based on the findings of the first project phase on the role of environmental secretariats in climate negotiations. The new study will focus on the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The research methods are networking analysis and discourse analysis. In particular, the researchers will examine how the actors involved in the negotiations influence the processes and results of the negotiations, the (latent) possibilities for influence resulting from their participation, and why certain interests are being implemented. "Previous scholarly studies on the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities have focused mainly on the national level, for example, on special education classes in school systems," explains Nina Kolleck. This DFG project aims, for the first time, to understand the negotiation processes at the global level, which provides the basis for national decisions.

This sub-project is part of the DFG-funded research group "International Public Administration," which is based at Freie Universität and is a joint project of LMU Munich, the German University of Administration Sciences Speyer, TU Darmstadt, the University of Potsdam, and Freie Universität Berlin.