Declarations: The Human Rights Podcast

In this special episode, we sat down with Jackson Odong of the Refugee Law Project, and Shama Ams from the Centre of Development Studies, to discuss justice in post-conflict and post-colonial contexts. Jackson describes the important role of documenting memory, while Shama speaks to the possibility for rights and weaponisation of citizenship. Are there alternative routes to justice and rights outside the context of the state? What obligations in terms of justice are owed, when one regime is replaced by another? All of this and more in this episode of declarations.

In this episode we talked about external borders and internal politics, trying to get to grips with what democracies owe refugees. As a long-standing former policy-maker and MP, Lord Smith helped us shed light on the domestic dimensions of the politics of the Syrian refugee crisis.

Declarations went to Washington DC earlier this year to talk to researchers and practitioners who are dealing with disinformation.

While there we met Alexa Koenig, Executive Director at the Berkeley Human Rights Center.

Alexa has had an illustrious career working in the arts, education and politics, before making the jump to a career in Law and Human Rights in particular. She's the author of the highly rated 'Hiding in Plain Sight: The Pursuit of War Criminals from Nuremberg to the War on Terror', and has helped pioneer one of the most significant human rights "innovations" in the digital age; the Human Rights Investigations Lab.

Declarations PROFILE is a new series that covers a wide range of notable and inspiring figures in the human rights world.

The Copenhagen Declaration - adopted April this year - unveiled tensions about the relationship between democracy and human rights. If human rights are universal, then they are not only for voting citizens. The views of the citizen majority in any given nation might not be in support of protecting the rights of minorities – non-citizens who cannot vote are particularly vulnerable.

However, the alternative to this can also be viewed as problematic: an independent court that can overrule the decisions of the nation-state is seen by many as having excessive authority and little relevance to domestic concerns.

Professor Çalı shared her expertise on what the Declaration (in draft form at the time) means for the state of human rights in Europe.

Music on this episode was generated by JukeDeck (theme song), and by Alex Finch ('Seeking Clarity')

Listen to the full extract on our latest episode.

From the Harvard Kennedy School, and the University of Cambridge, this is a special collaborative episode of Justice Matters and Declarations.

Do we live in a “post-truth” world? How does information shape national and international politics? Can we fact-check reliably in the social media age, and can we imagine a future where such standards can be enforced online? These are some of the questions we’ll be grappling with in this episode.

We were joined by Malachy Browne, a Senior Story Producer at The New York Times. Malachy’s led investigations from Yemen to the refugee camp known as the “Calais” jungle, and he’s a leader in using open-source digital techniques to verify social media stories -- work that gets right to the heart of today’s episode

In this episode, we are joined by Helen Jennings and Caitlin de Jode, who are organising a conference on ‘The Development of Abortion Rights in a Changing Europe’; the first of its kind in Cambridge. Helen, Caitlin, and their team, want to bring together scholars, activists and experts on the matter, to talk about how we can develop a meaningful framework through which abortion rights - amidst brexit and Ireland’s referendum on the 8th amendment - can be realized. What european, as well as global phenomena, are currently in motion that make this a particularly pressing matter now? What is the impact of conscientious objection on the provision of abortion to women in the UK? How should these competing rights be balanced? What changes - beyond the legal - are necessary, and who can help affect change?

Is Human Rights just a fable? To uncover this question, we venture down 'history' lane with Professor Samuel Moyn. What’s so special about the 1970s, and how does how we think about the emergence of human rights impact how we think of what human rights are, and what they are supposed to do? Join us and find out on this episode of Declarations.

In this episode, we talk about race, racism, borders, and human rights. What kinds of borders are erected around the rights you have - and the rights you don’t? Are human rights a language of liberation from structural oppression, or can it be an oppressive language itself? How can we decide?

We were joined by Dr Monica Moreno Figueroa, a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Cambridge. Monica’s research interests include the lived experience of ‘race’ and racism; feminist theory and the interconnections between beauty, emotions and racism with a focus on Latin America.

In this episode, we talk about the law, politics, and human rights implications of drones and targeted killings. What can international humanitarian law tell us about the legal status of rights? Can human rights prevent drone strikes? Should they - and if so, how?

We were joined by Christof Heyns, the former U.N. Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. Today, he serves on the U.N. Human Rights Committee and is Professor of Human Rights Law at the University of Pretoria.