"Hot Labor Summer" and the State of International Labor Rights

11/01/23 • 29 min

On this episode of Justice Matters, host Aminta Ossom interviews Jeff Vogt, Director of the Rule of Law Program at the Solidarity Center. Vogt is also the co-founder of the International Lawyers Assisting Workers Network, which brings together over 700 worker rights lawyers from around the globe. In 2022, he was appointed to the International Labor Organization (ILO) Governing Body and serves on the ILO Committee on Freedom of Association. Our host, Ossom, is a Lecturer on Law and Clinical Instructor in the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School, where she supervises projects focused on human rights and the global economy. Together, Ossom and Vogt discuss the labor rights movement, labor law, the right to work and the right to strike, and international human rights mechanisms.

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Do Human Rights Still Hold Power in the World?

On this episode of Justice Matters, co-host Mathias Risse speaks with Kenneth Roth, who led Human Rights Watch as its Executive Director for almost 30 years. Together they discuss the history of Human Rights Watch and Roth's reflections on his tenure, whether human rights still hold power in the world, how to bring about change in countries with abusive governments, difficult case countries, the future of human rights and democracy, and a preview of Ken's new book, Righting Wrongs. Roth is a Visiting Professor at Princeton and a Senior Fellow at the Carr Center.

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The Birth of US Human Rights Policy

On this episode of Justice Matters, co-host Kathryn Sikkink, the Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, speaks with two veterans of the human rights movement, John Salzberg and Joe Eldridge. John Salzberg was the key staff member working with Representative Don Fraser to hold the first set of hearings about the US and human rights in 1973, and later went on to work at the Human Rights Bureau at the US State Department. Prior to 1973, human rights were not explicitly incorporated into US foreign policy. Also in 1973, Joe Eldridge founded the Washington Office of Latin America (WOLA), an early human rights NGO, to lobby for support and criticize US human rights policy. Eldridge and Salzberg worked closely for many years. Together they discuss the “golden age” of US human rights policy; the work of congressman Don Fraser; the creation of the Bureau for Human Rights in the US State Department; US human rights foreign policy under Presidents Nixon, Carter, and Reagan; and the legacy of human rights reports on the larger field of human rights. Be sure to check out Harvard' Kennedy Schools newest podcast, Policy Cast: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty-research/policycast/more-indigenous-nations-self-govern-more-they-succeed