Join us at Void Art Centre on Thursday 5th October from 7-8:30pm for an interactive seminar with Professor Colin Harvey exploring the topic of: is there a future for human rights?
The aim of this interactive seminar is to offer a critical examination of the role and impact of human rights. We inhabit a world filled with the language of rights and a range of legal standards exist. Yet the struggle to realise rights in practice remains as challenging as ever, in the context, for example, of a climate emergency that raises existential questions. This has prompted much agonised reflection on the status of human rights. What more might be done to ensure effective implementation and enforcement? Are there limitations within the discourse that simply cannot be overcome? How might we reimagine the practice of rights to deliver on the promise of a better future?
This is an open invitation to a conversation about the future of human rights. Everyone is welcome. RSVP is required.
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Colin Harvey is Professor of Human Rights Law and Director of the Human Rights Centre in the School of Law at Queen’s University Belfast. He is a Fellow of the Senator George J Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, and an Associate Fellow of the Institute of Irish Studies. He has served as Head of the Law School at Queen’s. Before returning to Queen’s in 2005 he was Professor of Constitutional and Human Rights Law at the University of Leeds. Professor Harvey has held visiting positions at the University of Michigan, Fordham University, and the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has taught on the George Washington University – Oxford University Summer School in International Human Rights Law, and on the international human rights programme at the University of Oxford. He served two terms as a Commissioner on the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (2005-2011) and, in 2023, was appointed to the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission. He is the General Editor of Human Rights Law in Perspective (Hart-Bloomsbury) and is on the editorial boards of Human Rights Law Review and European Human Rights Law Review. He has written and taught extensively on human rights and constitutional law.
Further information available here: https://go.qub.ac.uk/charvey
The Human Rights Centre at Queen’s University, Belfast was established in 1990 to provide a focus for research and education on human rights. The Centre, based in the School of Law, supports the promotion and protection of human rights in the local and global community. The Centre is privileged to draw on the work of a strong team of academics and postgraduate scholars who are nationally and internationally recognised for their work on human rights. Key areas of research interest and expertise include civil liberties, migration, gender and sexual violence, international criminal law, transitional justice, amnesty laws, reparations, victims and ex-combatants, health and human rights, business and human rights and climate change and environmental justice amongst others. Members of the Centre are active in many different areas – leading and contributing to national and international research projects, publishing academic works, teaching undergraduate and postgraduate students in the School of Law, and engaging in knowledge transfer activities, including undertaking responses and consultations for civil society, governmental and international organisations. The Centre also organises a lively seminar series bringing internationally respected academics and practitioners to Queen’s throughout the year.
Image Courtesy of Colin Harvey
