Events

The latest book in the Amnesty International Global Ethics Series, published by Norton is The Human Right to Health, written by Professor Jonathan Wolff (UCL Philosophy).

On Tuesday 27 March, Amnesty International hosted a panel discussion to launch this new publication. The panel consisted of Jonathan Wolff, Mike Rowson (UCL Centre for International Health and Development) and Widney Brown (Amnesty International), and was chaired by Steve Crawshaw (Amnesty International).

Panel Discussion
Professor Wolff began by admitting that because of his philosophical roots he was a relatively recent convert to the concept of the human right to health. Despite this, his book defends the concept against multiple criticisms.

The first criticism to be discussed relates to the phrasing of “the right to the highest attainable standard of health” (United Nations).

Three routes of criticism seem to emanate from this statement, firstly, how is attainability measured – globally, nationally or regionally could give very different standards. Secondly, this seems an unreal expectation and thirdly, if this right exists – who is accountable for providing it.

A further point raised was the fact that health itself did not need to be a human right – it could be considered simply a culmination of other human rights.

(more…)

Claire Lougarre, UCL Laws PhD candidate, reports on ‘The Triumph of Human Rights: Dream or Nightmare?’, a UCL Lunch Hour Lecture held on 26 January. The talk was presented by Colm O’Cinneide (Reader, UCL Laws) and chaired by Michael Freeman (Professor, UCL Laws).

In 1945, the United Nations decided to provide a high level of protection to certain rights that it considered fundamental to human dignity, in response to the atrocities committed during the Second World War. This marked the start of human rights law.

This notion has since been stretched by academics, judges and the civil society to give rise to a greater protection of more and more human rights.

Colm O’Cinneide, Reader in Law with a considerable expertise in human rights, therefore, decided in his lecture to question whether the notion of human rights had been interpreted too extensively from its initial purpose.

And what perfect timing this was as, the previous day, David Cameron addressed in his speech to the Council of Europe the merits of human rights law, while criticising its extensive interpretation by the European Court of Human Rights.

(more…)

The European project that developed over the 65 years following the Second World War has delivered great benefits to Europe and the UK, but it also suffers from a severe democratic deficit and perceived illegitimacy.

This was the view that Ben Davies heard from Jack Straw MP – former Foreign Secretary, Home Secretary and Lord Chancellor – at his inaugural lecture as Visiting Professor in Public Policy at UCL’s Department of Political Science.

Mr Straw, supported by a densely footnoted handout, ran us through an impressively detailed ‘brief history’ of the project to bring the countries of Europe closer together after 1945, focusing mainly on the Council of Europe – the organisation that still co-ordinates European legal standards – and the European Union.

(more…)

It’s not often that the most distinguished attendees of a lecture are seated in the audience and not on stage. On 26 October, Sir Leigh Lewis, chair of the Commission on a Bill of Rights and former Permanent Secretary at the Department of Work and Pensions, along with Anthony Speaight QC and two other members of the Commission, sat quietly in ‘listening mode’ to a debate on a British Bill of Rights put on by UCL’s Institute for Human Rights (Live-tweeted under #BritishBillofRights @humanrightsucl). Avery Hancock, a first-year PhD student in political theory at UCL, reports.

(more…)