This course will enhance knowledge of international individual and collective human rights as developed through the United Nations system, examine the absence of effective remedies to redress and prevent violations of rights, and discuss practices used by litigators and legal activists to engage with the existing system and open up new possibilities for realization of rights. We will cover individual civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights guaranteed by core UN human rights treaties, such as the right to be free from discrimination. Collective rights, essential to survival and meaningful realization of individual rights, to peace, to self-determination, to development and to a healthy environment, will be addressed, along with the interdependence of individual and collective rights. Faculty will explain the duties of states to respect, protect and fulfill human rights and remedy violations and specific problems of enforcement of rights. Particular attention will be given to state suppression of expressive rights and the rights of association and assembly, protecting rights of refugees and asylum seekers under international law, and the extra-territorial use of domestic law in contravention of international law. We’ll discuss what rights can never be derogated, the duties of states erga omnes and universal jurisdiction. There will be an opportunity for discussion of needed changes to strengthen and ensure implementation and enforcement of all human rights.

This course took place on Thursday, September 19, 2024. 

Faculty for Course 5A:

• Bill Bowring, Professor of Law at Birkbeck College, University of London, UN expert consultant, human rights barrister and scholar.
• Curtis Doebbler, Law professor at University of Makeni in Sierra Leone, advisor to NGOs, and human rights attorney in San Antonio, Texas.
• Andrew Reid, International Human Rights practitioner and University of Denver law professor, expert on Indigenous peoples rights and Earth jurisprudence

The program was moderated by Marjorie Cohn, Dean of the People’s Academy of International Law.