UCL Institute for Human Rights

Part of the Current Legal Problems Series 2012-13

Speaker: Professor David Luban (Georgetown University)

Speaker: Professor Judith Lichtenberg (Georgetown University)

Chair: Professor John Tasioulas (UCL)

About this event: According to one recent estimate, the poorest five percent of Americans are richer than two thirds of the world’s people. But such comparisons can be misleading. Contemporary philosophers have been preoccupied with determining whether we have special moral obligations to members of our own society—for example, our poor compatriots—that we do not have to those outside our society. But they have neglected to ask how to compare the situations of poor people in one society to poor people in another. Professor Lichtenburg argued that for a variety of reasons, well-being is largely relative: how well off you are depends to a great extent on how well off others around you are. This fact has complex implications, for our responsibilities for benefiting poor compatriots as opposed to poor people in developing countries.

Speakers:

• Dr Mukesh Kapila, UN Representative on Sudan in 2004 and whistler blower on the genocide. Author of 'Against a Tide of Evil', released 14th March 2013, Aegis Trust Special Representative
• Baroness Goudie, Campaigner on women's rights
• Mariam Suleiman, Chairperson Darfur Victims Organisation
• Olivia Warham, Director of Waging Peace

Speakers:

• Morten Kjaerum, Director, EU Agency for Fundamental Rights
• Colm O’Cinneide, Reader in Law, University College London
• Alan Miller, Chair, European Group of National Human Rights Institutions
• Jozef de Witte, Chair European Network of Equality Bodies
• Sarah Spencer, Senior Fellow, Centre for Migration, Policy and Society, University of Oxford 
• Vladlen Stefanov, Chief, National Institutions and Regional Mechanisms Section, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
• David Langtry, Acting Chief Commissioner, Canadian Human Rights Commission

Speaker:

• Professor Cora Hoexter (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

Speaker:

• Prof. Katherine Stone (Arjay & Frances Miller Distinguished Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law) 

Speakers:

• Professor Aileen McColgan
• Professor Christopher McCrudden
• Lorenzo Zucca
• Professor Mark Hill QC
• Guy Haarscher
• Dr Myriam Hunter Henin
• Dr Ronan McCrea

Speaker:

• Dr Virginia Mantouvalou (Co-Director of the UCL Institute for Human Rights)

About the event:
This final Symposium from the Pentland Symposium series addressed the ethical challenges presented by philanthropy towards human rights organisations, both academic and non-academic. It considered recent charges that this kind of philanthropic giving distorts national politics; academic priorities; and undermines the will of Parliament.

Against the background of the Woolf report, the panel considered the ethics of philanthropic giving and how this form of funding might be treated so as to avoid accusations of bias, ‘opinion-buying’, and research agenda setting by donors.

The UCL Institute for Human Rights and the UCL Labour Rights Institute hosted a one-day international workshop on the right to work.

The UCL Institute for Human Rights and the UCL Labour Rights Institute hosted a lively debate on social rights. Professor Conor Gearty (LSE) and Dr Virginia Mantouvalou (UCL) debated the role of courts and the role of legislatures in the protection of rights such as the right to housing and the right to work. Drawing on the book 'Debating Social Rights' (Gearty, Mantouvalou, Hart 2011), Professor Gearty suggested that social rights should be kept away from lawyers and courts. Dr Mantouvalou argued in support of their 'legalisation', namely the protection through judicial and legislative avenues. Dr Jeff King (UCL) acted as a commentator with the event chaired by Dr Ronan McCrea (UCL).

Participants: Professor Nicos Alivizatos (University of Athens, Faculty of Law), Judge Christos Rozakis (former Vice-President of the European Court of Human Rights), Judge Dean Spielmann (European Court of Human Rights, President of Section V), Dr Marialena Tsirli (Deputy Section Registrar, European Court of Human Rights), Dr Panayotis Voyatzis (Referendaire, European Court of Human Rights). From UCL Dr George Letsas and Dr Virginia Mantouvalou.

Speakers:

• Judge Jebens - Former Judge of the European Court of Human Rights and Judge of the Court of Appeal for Mid-Norway (Trondheim)
• Judge Spielmann - European Court of Human Rights

Speakers

• Aileen Kavanagh (University of Oxford)
• Com O'Cinneide (UCL Laws)
• Saladin Meckled-Garcia (UCL Institute for Human Rights)
• Chaired by Joshua Rozenberg, Presenter of the BBC's Law in Action

Speakers:

Andrew Duff MEP, Johan Callewaert (ECHR), Steve Peers (Essex), Hannes Kraemer (Euroepan Commission), Sir Stephen Sedley, Paul Craig (Oxford), Takis Tridimas (QMUL), Sir Konrad Schiemann (ECJ), Angelika Nusberger (ECHR), Tobias Lock (UCL), and George Letsas (UCL)

Participants:

• Professor Yves Cabannes - UCL Development and Planning Unit, co-author of report
• Sylvia Guimaraes - Building & Social Housing Federation, co-author
• Cassidy Johnson - UCL Development and Planning Unit, co-author
• Malavika Vartak - Amnesty International UK
• Cesare Ottolini - International Alliance of Inhabitants and Zero Eviction Campaign
• Saladin Meckled-Garcia - UCL Institute for Human Rights
• George Letsas - UCL Institute for Human Rights
• Facilitated by Gautam Bhan - Indian Institute for Human Settlements

Participants

• Lord Alderdice, Chair of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords
• Professor Peter Woodward, Reading University
• Saifeldin Nemir, Darfur Development Agenda
• Olivia Warham, Director, Waging Peace
• Saladin Meckled-Garcia, UCL (Chair)

About the Event

The UCL Student Human Rights Programme and the UCL Institute for Human Rights hosted a screening of 'In the Land of the Free', a documentary about the incarceration of three members of the Black Panther Party in the Louisiana State Penitentiary.

Speakers

Mattias Kumm (NYU), Nicos Stavropoulos (Oxford), Pavlos Eleftheriadis (Oxford), Sabina Appelt (UCL), Julian Rivers (Bristol), Emmanuel Voyiakis (Brunel), Patrick Capps, George Letsas and Saladin Meckled-Garcia.