Declarations: The Human Rights Podcast

In this episode, we talk about occupation, refugee rights, and the status of Palestine. Are there systematic ways to remedy human rights abuses against an occupied people? How has human rights language been used to facilitate occupation? What can be done?

We were joined by Dr Ruba Salih (SOAS), expert on Transnational Migration and Gender, and Odette Murray, who is a lecturer in Law.

In this episode, we look at global economic institutions, and their role in human rights. Dr Shailaja Fennell joined us to discuss questions of whether institutions can advance, or inhibit human rights? What can we learn from failures in development, and how can lessons learned be used as a srping-board for tackling issues of gender, education and inequality?

In this episode, we discuss the weaponisation of human rights, i.e. are human rights always "good"; or are they at times used for more sinister ends? How has the use of human rights changed from the days in which they paved the way for movements around the globe, from the civil rights movement to the struggle to end apartheid, till today? Helping us delve into these murky waters, we were joined by Journalist, retired Civil Rights Lawyer, and Author of 'The Passion of Chelsea Manning', Chase Madar.

On this episode, we discussed refugee rights in international and domestic contexts. We were joined by Sociology PhD student, Rabia Nasimi, who - drawing on her own experience - talked us through the importance of people's individual backgrounds in matters of integration. The conversation also covered the role of grassroots organisations as compared to larger movements and institutions, and questioned whether integration is always benevolent. This episode emphasises that rights are only part of the issue, and that we need to start a more grounded conversation.

This week we spoke with Mbalenhle Matandela who was an active voice in the Right to Protest and Rhodes Must Fall campaigns in South Africa and is now a Rhodes scholar at Oxford. We discussed the various modes of protest and resistance, artificial impositions of notions of order, the politics of space and why 'armchair activists' have a crucial role to play.

In this episode, we talk about human rights and intervention, in the context of international institutions and their role in enforcing rights. Do local contexts matter? What are the everyday realities of countries subject to decrees by the International Criminal Court? And do rights belong to the individual or the community?

Dr Njoki Wamai, a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Centre for Governance and Human Rights, helps us answer these questions in this episode.

What does cultural heritage mean, who can claim it, and what does it have to do with rights? With a significant number of artifacts on display in British museums having been removed from their original owners during periods of colonisation, this episode tackles the intersection between cultural artefacts, and larger issues of justice such as racial inequality, systemic injustice, and property rights.

Gweagal activist, Rodney Kelly, joined us from Australia, to speak about his fight for the return of Gweagal spears and shields held by the Museum of Archeology and Anthropology in Cambridge, and the British Museum.

What do #TakeAKnee, #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter have in common?

In this episode, we explored ongoing debates surrounding the place of rights in redressing structural injustice. We talked about the language of rights, as used by both social movements and institutions, as well as social media and legislation. What are the best practices to advance human rights in an imperfect world? All of this and more, in today's episode.

Welcome to the 2nd season of Declarations: The Human Rights Podcast. With every episode, we’ll be exploring contemporary debates about politics and human rights with people who study them, and people who fight for them — both here in the UK and around the world.

Taking on 3 thematic areas, this season focuses on 'protest', 'subjugation', and 'technologies of oppression/liberation'. Our first episode goes live on October 30th 2017 - so tune in!

We can now take satellite pictures from the sky, get DNA samples on the scene and track moving networks of people through phones, laptops and other mobile technologies. With all this tech, human rights organisations should have a better idea than ever of the situation on the ground. But does this really matter, and can it really work?

From using big data to predict instances of human rights abuse to combining different types of evidence to prove they have occurred, Declarations sat down with Steven Livingston, a Professor at George Washington University and a senior fellow at the Carr Centre for Human Rights at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, to talk about how technology is changing the human rights scene.