Eleanor Roosevelt, chair of the United Nations Uman Rights Commission, during a December 1948 press conference in Paris, France, on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Taking stock of the human rights revolution
Workshop to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was revolutionary at its creation in 1948, a bold assertion of every individual’s “basic rights and fundamental freedoms” by the still-young United Nations. Eleanor Roosevelt chaired the UN committee that wrote it, and the 58 member nations approved it by a resounding vote.
In the 75 years since, says UB School of Law Professor Paul Linden-Retek, provisions of the UDHR have been codified into international law, giving specificity and force to the aspirational language of the document. But human rights are an unfinished project, and an upcoming workshop at the law school will take stock of that progress at this significant anniversary.
“The International Human Rights Regime at 75—Accomplishments and Challenges” will take place at 1 p.m. Friday, November 10, in 106 O’Brian Hall. It’s open to students, faculty and the public, with registration available online. The program is sponsored by the Buffalo Human Rights Center and the Buffalo Human Rights Law Review.
Friday, November 10
1 p.m.-3:15 p.m.
Room 106 O'Brian Hall
University at Buffalo (North Campus)
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This program is sponsored by the Buffalo Human Rights Center and the Buffalo Human Rights Law Review at the University at Buffalo School of Law.
Please email Prof. Paul Linden-Retek (plinden@buffalo.edu) for access to accompanying readings.
James J. Silk
Binger Clinical Professor of Human Rights; Director, Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights; Yale Law School
[View faculty profile]
The event features Professor James J. Silk, Yale Law School professor and director of the Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights. An esteemed and widely admired practitioner and scholar in the field, Silk also directs Yale’s Multidisciplinary Academic Program in Human Rights, and previously led the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights in Washington, D.C. His remarks, to be followed by a discussion with the audience, will center on the challenges that global populist movements have posed recently to human rights protections, and reflect on how the establishment of international criminal justice courts have called violators to account but also displaced other, perhaps more consequential efforts, to enforce human rights.
The workshop coincides with Linden-Retek’s current seminar course on advanced human rights, which looks at the aims and the challenges of the Declaration. “The seminar looks back on that founding moment of the UN and the UDHR,” Linden-Retek says, “to understand the ambitions of that document, and to understand its political context when the world was recovering from a devastating global war and the unspeakable crimes of the Holocaust and was still divided by the violence of empire and colonialism. We’re tracing the tensions and contradictions of the moment as they’re reflected in that document—and as they continue to weigh on struggles to think about and to realize human rights today.”
“This was an aspirational document, signed and celebrated and deeply influential, but its immediate legal force was quite limited. It would be another two decades before some of the Declaration’s rights would be codified in international covenants, which bind states by treaty and create sophisticated mechanisms for reporting and monitoring.”
It’s a rich subject, and Linden-Retek has brought experts to his seminar to discuss issues such as children’s rights, racial discrimination, and asylum and refugee law—“practitioners and scholars at the leading edge of where the doctrine and the thinking are now.”
Of the upcoming workshop on Friday, he says, “I view this as an occasion to reflect on how international human rights law has developed over the last 75 years and to see in that history certain guidance and inspiration for the future of human rights.”