Justice Matters - The UN Business & Human Rights Forum: Twelve Years and Counting

The UN Business & Human Rights Forum: Twelve Years and Counting

02/15/24 • 51 min

Today on Justice Matters we take a deep dive into the UN Business Human Rights Forum, which just wrapped up its 12th iteration at the end of 2023. Co-host Aminta Ossom attended the forum and interviewed working group member Robert McCorquodale to get some background on the inner workings of the Forum. Ossom also spoke with long-time attendee of the Forum, Corinne Lewis, a legal consultant who has worked on business and human rights with organizations of all types, to get her perspective on how the Forum has evolved over the years. Together, these two interviews paint a picture of the origins of the Forum; how it has led to the development of a robust sector of business and human rights; the interplay between attendees from business, government, civil society, and rights holders; and the future of the Forum.

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A New Civil Rights Movement

On today's episode of Justice Matters, co-host Maggie Gates talks with Jill Collen Jefferson, a civil and human rights lawyer and the founder of Julian, a national organization based in Mississippi that works to attack discrimination in all forms through legal advocacy, organizing, policy, and innovation. With experience on Capitol Hill, at think-tanks, Organizing for Action, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Public International Law and Policy Group, and big law, Jill brings a tremendous depth of knowledge and personal experience to her effort to build the future of civil and human rights. Together she and Maggie discuss: the founding of Julian, how they draw on international human rights movements to build their civil rights strategy in the US, why focusing on Mississippi is so important, modern day lynchings, and how building community is central to building a new civil rights movement.

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The Human Rights Violations of Abortion Bans

On today’s episode of Justice Matters, co-host Maggie Gates talks with Karla Torres and Catalina Martinez Coral from the Center for Reproductive Rights. On November 8, 2023, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) held a landmark hearing on the human rights violations caused by the reversal of Roe v. Wade and the move to ban abortion in the United States.

The IACHR is a principle and autonomous body of the organization of American States that monitors human rights across the Americas. The hearing was requested by the Center for Reproductive Rights and 13 other US organizations focused on reproductive health rights and justice, disability rights, and human rights. In this conversation, Torres and Coral discuss the hearing, abortion as an essential human right, the Dobbs decision in the U.S., the feminist-led Legal and Social decriminalization of abortion in Latin America and its impact on the world, and the future of abortion rights in the U.S.

Karla Torres has been senior human rights counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights since 2017. She works within the U.S. Human Rights Team and collaborates with staff across various departments, including the U.S. Policy and Advocacy and U.S. Litigation teams, as well as the Center's Global Legal Program. Torres most recently served as a program officer at Equality Now, where she worked in close partnership with grassroots organizations in the Americas to expose human rights violations against women and girls and to promote legal frameworks that would protect against these violations.

Catalina Martinez Corral is a feminist from Cali, Colombia. She's currently the vice president for Latin America and the Caribbean at the Center for Reproductive Rights. She is a member of the Causa Justa Movement and one of the plaintiffs in the historic ruling that partially decriminalized abortion in Colombia.