On Human Rights

Wanhong Zhang is a visiting professor at RWI, and is a Professor of Jurisprudence at Wuhan University School of Law, in China. He is also the Director of the Wuhan University Public Interest and Development Law Institute. Zhang focuses on human rights and disabilities, as well as business. He met with us to discuss his work with RWI, to give us some insight into human rights challenges in regard to China, and to talk about the work the Wuhan Public Interest and Development Law Institute does to help protect the poor and the marginalised.

Lee Swepston was appointed as the ILO’s Director of the Department of Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, and Senior Adviser on Human Rights in 2004. He has worked in many areas including children's rights, indigenous and tribal peoples, non-discrimination, abolition of forced labour, and freedom of association. Lee retired from ILO in 2007 and became a consultant. He lectures on international human rights and labour law within the International Human Rights Masters Programme at Lund University. We met with him to discuss the ICCPR and ICESCR (on their 50th anniversary), labour law, and what advice he would give to students seeking a career in human rights.

Brian Burdekin is an International Adviser to numerous National Human Rights Institutions. He was Special Adviser on National Institutions to the first three United Nations High Commissioners for Human Rights. Burdekin was also Federal Human Rights Commissioner of Australia, and was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in 1995. He was kind enough to share some of his invaluable knowledge in regard to National Human Rights Institutions with us.

Gay McDougall is a Human rights activist and lawyer. She is a Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at the Leitner Center on International Law and Justice at Fordham University Law School, and is a member of the United Nation’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. We spoke with her about CERD and racial discrimination.

Barbara Oomen is the Dean of University College, Roosevelt and Professor of Law at Utrecht University, and the co-editor of a new book, “Global Urban Justice: The Rise of Human Rights Cities.” She joined us at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law to talk about the rise of human rights cities around the globe.

Suzanne Dovi, an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Arizona, will speak at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute about the kind of voice victims are given in the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Dr. Mart Susi is an Associate Professor of Human Rights Law at Tallinn University. He visited the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law on 19 May to deliver a presentation titled: “Protecting freedom of expression in new media – mission impossible?”. We met with him to discuss the matter further.

Dr. Benjamin Gregg is a professor of Social and Political Theory at the University of Texas, at Austin. He's the Fulbright Visiting Professor at Johannes Kepler University of Linz, Austria. He spoke with us about his work and his recently published book "The Human Rights State: Justice Within and Beyond Sovereign Nations."

Michal Balcerzak is a professor of international human rights law at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Poland. We spoke to him about his work as a member of the UN’s working group Committee of Experts on People of African Descent.

Phillip Tahmindjis is the Director of the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute. He joins us today from London to talk about a new report he co-edited on the role of the universal periodic review in advancing human rights in the administration of justice.

Sumudu Atapattu is the director of research centers at the University of Wisconsin Law School in the United States. She talks to us about the connection between climate change and human rights and why it matters.

Professor Emeritus Göran Melander, founder of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, talks about the breakthroughs and steps taken in the field of human rights, the many challenging situations in today’s world, and identifies one violation of human rights where lack of knowledge is a huge problem.

Elies van Sliedregt talks about cyber warfare -- how it is secretive, mostly unregulated, and poses major challenges to international law. She is a professor of criminal law at VU University in Amsterdam and the dean of the faculty of law there. She has been published extensively in the field of international and European criminal law.

We talk to Mark Gibney, the Raoul Wallenberg Visiting Professor of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at Lund University and the Raoul Wallenberg Institute. He talks about the biggest challenges facing human rights today, the Syrian refugee crisis, the war on terrorism, and what he calls "shutting off human rights for millions of people" after a terrorist attack.