Human Rights Centre Blog
By Passent Moussa The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was a milestone in the history of the international community, and an aspiration that brought nations together in the wake of the Holocaust of World War II. The aim was to prevent such an atrocity from happening again, and to protect the rights of all […]
by Pauline Canham In focus Saudi Arabia’s bid to join Human Rights Council fails China, Russia and Pakistan have been elected to the Human Rights Council for the next three years, while Saudi Arabia failed to win a seat in the 13th October vote, despite being the current chair of the G20. A secret ballot […]
by Pauline Canham and Lauren Ng COVID-19 Update – Stories from around the world… Contact-tracing apps challenge the right to privacy Countries, like the UK, looking to introduce a track-and-trace app to tackle the spread of coronavirus, would do well to learn the lessons from already-introduced schemes. There is widespread concern about rights to privacy, […]
By Paul Hunt This blog originally appeared on The Conversation For 12 days, Philip Alston, the UN envoy on extreme poverty and human rights, and his tireless team, have travelled the length and breadth of the UK. They’ve listened to hundreds of people who have experienced poverty. Many of these stories were heartbreaking, as I witnessed when attending […]
By Dr Andrew Fagan On Thursday 20 June 2018, the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, and the US Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, announced that the US was taking the unprecedented move of formally withdrawing from the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC).  America’s two most senior diplomats sought to justify the not-unexpected […]
By Andrew Fagan and Munira Ali Human rights have become deeply political in the UK, and have been persistently condemned by many opinion-formers (for examples, see here and here). Where once many considered human rights to be entirely secure, in the UK human rights are increasingly misrepresented as embodying the out-of-touch prejudices of that increasingly […]
Co-authored by the following members of the Human Rights Centre, University of Essex: Munira Ali, Acting Project Officer; Lorna McGregor, Director; Daragh Murray, Blog Editor; Patricia Palacios Zuloaga, Director, Human Rights Centre Clinic; Sir Nigel Rodley, Chair; Clara Sandoval, Acting Director (2017); Ahmed Shaheed, Deputy Director. Editors Note: This blog originally appeared on EJIL:Talk! This post also […]
By GS Gilbert Given that there are approximately 65 million forcibly displaced individuals of concern to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), respect for international refugee law, international human rights law, the international law of armed conflict, international criminal law and the rule of law generally has never been greater if the need for flight is […]
By Rick Lines and Damon Barret The April 2016 UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on the world drug problem offered a unique opportunity to re-examine the approach of punitive suppression that underpins global drug control. As the first such meeting to be held since 1998, it was a chance to set a new course, […]
Putting to one side the question of just how many people arriving in Europe would constitute a crisis given the resources that are available in this region, especially after having regard to the numbers that cross into and remain in states in Africa and south-east Asia, this article is focusing on ‘Europe’, ‘refugees’ and the […]
Human Rights Centre Blog