Events and Announcements: 8 February 2020

Events

• Event on ‘Are fundamental rights losing or gaining ground?’: The Centre for Fundamental Rights at the Hertie School is pleased to announce its launch event ‘Are fundamental rights losing or gaining ground?’ on 20 February 2020 at 6 pm at the Hertie School in Berlin. Global trends suggest that norms and institutions of fundamental rights are losing ground. Many governments and political movements explicitly deny fundamental rights’ primacy, and some even violate them with impunity. Some political actors and scholars question the centrality and utility of fundamental rights, claiming that they undermine other values such as security, cultural identity, economic development and social justice. Yet there remain strong voices who insist that fundamental rights have a vital role in addressing new and enduring challenges – migration, the climate crisis and new technologies, to name a few. Such rights are embedded in the very ethos of courts, human rights institutions and many transnational social movements, and indeed in grassroots activism from below. Susanne Baer, Başak Çalı, Cathryn Costello, and Patricia Sellers, along with the event chair Arjun Appadurai, will debate fundamental questions on fundamental rights: are they losing or gaining ground, or holding their own in this era of heightened contestation? Do they still provide a lingua franca for legitimate legal and political decision-making? Are current rights and accountability structures fit for the 21st century and the challenges it has brought? These questions and more will be addressed during this interactive and engaging event. To register, go here.
• Conference on ‘Prohibition, Prosecution, and Prevention of Enforced Disappearances’: The Nuremberg Academy is organizing the international conference on ‘Prohibition, Prosecution, and Prevention of Enforced Disappearances’ in cooperation with the Centre for Human Rights Erlangen-Nürnberg (CHREN) of Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg at Courtroom 600 in the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, Germany, on 15-16 May 2020. The conference will reflect on the importance of sanctioning and criminalizing enforced disappearances, by analyzing the concept of enforced disappearance as a human rights violation and as a crime. In light of the upcoming tenth anniversary of the entry into force of the Enforced Disappearances Convention, the conference will provide a forum for leading international experts and practitioners to critically discuss what lessons can be learned from the origins, evolution, and practical experience of the concept of enforced disappearances for the advancement of the fields of human rights law and international criminal law. Prof. Olivier de Frouville from Université Panthéon-Assas (Paris II) and member of the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances will deliver the keynote address. Information on the conference and online registration on the website of the International Nuremberg Principles Academy can be found here.

Call for Papers

• ITLOS – Nippon Foundation Capacity Building and Training Programme 2020-2021: The ITLOS-Nippon Foundation Capacity-Building and Training Programme on Dispute Settlement under UNCLOS, July 2020 – March 2021, which will be held at ITLOS in Hamburg, Germany, is welcoming applicants until 3 April 2020. For more information see the flyer and website.

If you would like to post an announcement on Opinio Juris, please contact John Heieck at eventsandannouncements[at]gmail[dot]com with a one-paragraph description of your announcement along with hyperlinks to more information.