HUMAN RIGHTS AND GLOBAL JUSTICE CONFERENCE

29 – 31 March 2006,
Scarman House, University of Warwick, UK

 

THEMATIC OUTLINE

 

The conference will explore ways in which the globalisation of human rights discourse impacts on issues of social justice within the emergent discourse of new global social policy signified among other instruments by the Millennium Development Goals, the Global Compact and Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Organisations with Respect to Human Rights. Human rights law and jurisprudence need to be informed by the perspectives of contemporary globalization. Likewise, the latter needs to converse with some practices of human rights activism, including and transcending advocacy networks. In this respect we will be exploring a variety of discourses with a focus on law but with broad involvement of social science concerns.

Human rights discourse impinges on globalisation discourse in a number of ways. Universalism of human rights is at the centre of the controversy about globalisation. A variety of discourses see a virtuous link between globalisation, the growth of international human rights instruments and national implementation of those instruments in the countries of the South, economic development and the relief of poverty (Sen). On the other hand, this approach has received a critical response from scholars who criticise the discourse from a variety of perspectives (Ghai, Baxi, Fitzpatrick, Santos, Rajagopal). For example, Rajagopal has questioned ‘How can human rights discourse come to terms with the fact that it is the process of bringing development that has caused serious human-rights violations among deprived sections of the Third World Peoples? Instead of asking these critical questions, mainstream human-rights discourse labels itself progressive for a facile support of a ‘welfare’ state in an age of market fetishism and globalisation’. A key dimension is the contrasting use of human rights discourses by globalising agencies and resistance movements.

Baxi has characterised the new welfarist discourse as ‘the paradigm of trade-related, market-friendly human rights’ and has critiqued the market-friendly discourse with the original universalist paradigm of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The intimate connection between these paradigms has come to the fore in contrasting recent developments such as the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, the Global Compact and the Sub-Commission on Human Rights’ Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights. These conflicting discourses are especially pertinent in the post 9/11 redefinitions of globalisation of human security. New perspectives derived from culture, religion and gender are also influencing this process of redefinition. This conference seeks to address the above within six thematic clusters:

• The Nature of Human Rights Discourses: This cluster seeks to consider the historical and theoretical significance of human rights discourses including North-South, gender and cultural differences in discourses.
• Globalization and the Market in Human Rights: This cluster will seek to explore the significance of alternate paradigms in human rights, for example in the case of the Millennium Development Goals, the Global Compact and the Norms and Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations
• Care and Justice: This cluster seeks to consider the human rights dimensions of the care and justice debate as it concerns issues such as gender and ecology.
• Social Activism and New Social Movements: This cluster aims to examine the role of global networks of activist movements and the nature of social, juridical and judicial activism for human rights in the global south.
• Recognition and Redistribution: This section will involve a critical consideration of the recognition/redistribution framework for considering a wide variety of rights and social justice concerns in relation to gender, communal, immigrant, class and other social inequalities
• Security and Suffering: This cluster will examine new global visions of collective human security.

The conference will start at 5pm on Wednesday, 29 March 2006 with a public keynote panel session followed by a welcome reception and is expected to conclude after the closing plenary session at 4pm on Friday, 31 March 2006.

The conference is jointly organised by the Centre for Globalisation and Regionalisation (CSGR), University of Warwick and the Warwick Law School with support from the Institute of Women's Law, University of Oslo and the Centre for Human Rights in Practice, University of Warwick.