On Human Rights

Why do so many of us find the idea that nature might have rights so compelling or so preposterous? And why do so many serious scholars – of both human rights and environmental policy – avoid the issue altogether?In this episode on “On Human Rights” we will go deeper in to this fascinating and thought provoking discussion through the lens of Walter F. Baber. Baber is the 2017/18 Fulbright Distinguished Chair of Public International Law at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and the Faculty of Law at Lund University. He has spent the last 30 years on environmental policies. This lecture was part of a series of human rights related lectures which RWI is co-organizing with the Association of Foreign Affairs, under the banner of the so called “Wednesday night Rights”.

These days, it seems what was once up is down, down is up. We sat down for a wide ranging discussion on what needs to be done to improve human rights worldwide with representatives from two leading human rights organizations, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. In this discussion, recorded at Almedalen in Visby on the island of Gotland in Sweden, we spoke to Maja Åberg, who is policy advisor for Amnesty International and Måns Molander, who is the Sweden and Denmark Director of Human Rights Watch.

During the celebration of democracy on the island of Gotland, Sweden this week, we’ve been interviewing different people involved in some way or another in human rights or international humanitarian law. In this episode of “On Human Rights,” our team leader for Inclusive Societies Gabriella Fredriksson interviews Georg Andrén. He is the General Secretary of the NGO Diakonia in Sweden and Concord, a network of different civil society actors in Sweden. He talks about the problems with decreasing rule of law, shrinking space, and the rise of populism. “We’re not just seeing this in the far-right, it’s starting to move into the mainstream political parties,” he says. “We’re only two months away from an election in Sweden, and I’m worried.” Speaking about civil society in countries around the world, he says, “We haven’t done enough to ensure that these systems work enough for the rights holders. I saw it very close in Honduras and Guatemala. We need to talk to our partners and together talk to them about how to

Our team leader for Inclusive Societies Gabriella Fredriksson sat down to talk to Charlotte Petri Gornitzka in Visby during Almedalen week in Sweden for a conversation on our “On Human Rights” podcast. Petri Gornitzka is the Chair of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris. Prior to this, she served as Director-General of the Swedish International Development Co-operation Agency (SIDA) where she emphasized Sweden’s role as leader in development co-operation and led efforts to implement innovative models to stimulate private sector engagement in development activities. In this podcast interview, they discuss how to succeed with cooperation development, how to make more money work with development and why it’s important to give politicians narratives about why development works. “It’s much more effective with development solutions than military solutions,” she says. “Then you will convince the hardliners. But to be fair to many

In this episode we have an interview from the recent Nature of Peace conference at Lund University. Our senior researcher Alejandro Fuentes interviews Carl Bruch. He’s a senior attorney and director of international programs at the Environmental Law Institute in Washington, D.C. He has been leading for many years the global effort to establish a new multidisciplinary field of environmental peacebuilding.

In our latest episode of "On Human Rights," we continue our series exploring human rights and blockchain. In this episode we speak to René Taus Hansen. He’s the Deputy head of quality assurance at the ministry of foreign affairs in Denmark. They recently issued a report called "Hack the Future of Development Aid: Blockchain and Development." "We wanted to start this conversation about how can we think differently, because we need to do something drastically different in order to achieve what we want before 2030," saus Taus Hansen. "Basically, that's why we called it Hack Development Aid. We mean that in a positive sense. We don't necessarily assign a negative meaning to the word 'hack,' simply to think differently."

In western countries, people of African Descent are the most targeted group when it comes to violent hate crimes and discrimination. In this podcast we sat down to discuss and learn more about a UN platform that aims to combat this: the International Decade for People of African Descent (the Decade). The podcast features an RWI Visiting Researcher, Michael McEachrane, who recently attended the Decades regional meeting in Geneva. He also helped the OHCHR to develop the conference program. The Decade was proclaimed in resolution 68/237 by the General Assembly and is to be observed from 2015 to 2024. It provides a solid framework for the United Nations, Member States, civil society and all other relevant actors to join together with people of African descent. They will work together to create and take effective measures for the implementation of the programme of activities in the spirit of recognition, justice and development. “The Decade is an opportunity for people of African descent to promote our interest

We are interviewing experts from around the world for our podcast series “Human Rights and Blockchain.” It is an in-depth exploration of the potential uses of blockchain, the technology behind bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, to improve our enjoyment of human rights. In this episode, we speak to Hanane Boujemi. She is a senior tech policy expert with more than a decade experience in the economic and legal aspects of Internet Policy and Governance.

Richard Falk is an international law and international relations scholar who taught at Princeton University for forty years. For a six year period beginning in 2008, he served as a United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. Falk recently joined us in Lund to launch his latest book. We took the opportunity to interview him on a wide range of issues, from his thoughts on the state of world affairs today to his controversial UN report on Israel and his recent book, “Revisiting the Vietnam War and International Law: Views and Interpretations of Richard Falk.” “Law is neutral in its normative foundations,” he says, “and it depends who controls the formation and interpretation to understand if it works for private interests, national interests or human interests. My effort has been to try to align international law to a greater extent with human interest and to reinterpret national interests so they wouldn’t collide with the human interes

We are launching a new podcast series, “Human Rights and Blockchain." It will be an in-depth exploration of the potential uses of blockchain, the technology behind bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, to improve our enjoyment of human rights. First out of the block (no pun intended) is Walid Al-Saqaf. He is a Senior Lecturer at Södertorn University in Stockholm where he does research on media technology and blockchain.

In our latest episode of “On Human Rights,” we interview Nick Bryer, the head of inequality campaigns at Oxfam, about its latest report on inequality. The report, “Reward Work, Not Wealth,” finds that in the last year, 82% of new wealth went to the richest 1%. “There is a wealth of evidence that shows that tackling equality is good for everyone,” Bryer says. “More equal societies are more stable, safer, more economically stable and prosperous.” In this episode, Radu Mares, RWI’s Senior researcher and co-team leader for Economic Globalization and Human Rights, asks Bryer about the report, the methods used and what it all means.

In thist episode of “On Human Rights,” we hear Thomas Spijkerboer, who has, for over a decade, done research on border deaths and their correlation to European migration policies. Photo: Eric Hertz

A nurse, politician and bridge builder. In this podcast, we meet Özlem Cekic, who has for the last seven years reached out to people sending her hate emails. She calls it dialogue coffee. Enjoy!

With Thuli Madonsela

Torture: An Expert's Confrontation with an Everyday Evil by The Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law

Is the EU losing its legitimacy and role as a promoter of human rights? by The Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law

Jason Pobjoy: The Child in International Refugee Law by The Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law

The UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and hazardous substances and wastes, Baskut Tuncak, joins us for our latest episode of “On Human Rights.” “Toxic pollution is quite possibly, very likely, the leading cause of premature preventive death in the world, so the World Health Organization estimates that it’s almost 13 million people per year who die prematurely from diseases that are linked to an unhealthy environment,” he says. His work is informally known as the UN Human Rights Council’s mandate on "toxics.” Tuncak is a visiting scholar at American University's Washington College of Law in Washington, D.C. He is also an affiliated researcher with the Raoul Wallenberg Institute.

The Raoul Wallenberg Institute recently commemorated the civil courage and memory of Raoul Wallenberg here in Lund. And as part of that commemoration, we invited two women from a small town in southern Sweden to speak about the work they are doing to help young asylum seekers where they live. So we recorded this live session with Marie Clereus and Pernilla Thellmark. We hope you enjoy and are touched by it. Just a warning, some of the questions from the audience might be difficult to hear. Enjoy.

Today our Stockholm office director Malin Oud speaks to Olle Wästberg. Wästberg was long-time member of the Swedish parliament. He has had a long career in politics and media. He also served as Consul General of Sweden in New York City. Wästberg has been instrumental in getting Sweden a day to commemorate Raoul Wallenberg, on August 27.