PROFILE: Dr Alexa Koenig, Berkeley Human Rights Center

07/15/18 • 36 min

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.

Previous Episode

What is the 'Copenhagen Declaration'?(with Prof. Başak Çalı)

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')

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