Declarations: The Human Rights Podcast

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.

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')

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.