Rescuing Human Rights: A Radically Moderate Approach

Friday, September 13 | 2:30PM  - 4:30PM| Ginn Library Reading Room, Medford Campus

Resolving complex social problems requires more than simplistic appeals to rights, and adopting a ‘radically moderate’ approach that recognizes both the potential and the limits of international human rights law offers the best hope of preserving the principle that we all have rights, simply because we are human.  Rescuing Human Rights calls for understanding ‘human rights’ as international human rights law and maintaining the distinctions between binding legal obligations on governments and broader issues of ethics, politics, and social change. 

HURST HANNUM is Professor of International Law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. His scholarly work has been complemented by service as consultant/advisor to a number of intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations, including the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and Department of Political Affairs. He has been counsel in complaints before European, Inter-American, and U.N. human rights bodies. Professor Hannum was most recently a senior researcher at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, University of Oxford.