Human Rights Leadership: Challenges, Perspectives, Futures

This event has now finished.
  • Date and time: Tuesday 12 December 2023, 9am to Wednesday 13 December 2023, 5pm
  • Location: In-person only
    Bowland Theatre, Berrick Saul Building, Campus West, University of York (Map)
  • Audience: Open to all
  • Admission: Free admission, booking required

Event details

In 2023, the Centre for Applied Human Rights (CAHR) is turning 15!

Join us for CAHR@15 as we celebrate generations of masters’ students who have engaged critically with the law and politics of human rights on our interdisciplinary programmes. As well as the many CAHR doctoral researchers who advanced the field of applied human rights. We are indebted to the over 100 human rights defenders from across the globe who found respite and protection at CAHR, thus enabling them to continue their activism. We recognise our teaching, research and administrative support staff who, make us what we are. 

CAHR@15 is also a time for reflection. As an activist centre situated in a University for Public Good, our research, knowledge exchange, teaching, protective and advocacy activities are anchored in real-world human rights and humanitarian challenges and opportunities. At times such as these, the CAHR community must reflect on the challenges, perspectives, and futures of human rights leadership.

CAHR masters and doctoral students and alumni, former CAHR human rights defenders fellows, the Centre’s institutional partners and collaborators, members of the York local community and the global human rights network, will join us in addressing the following overarching questions:

  • As an international movement, how should we talk about human rights ‘leadership’ - are there alternative or better vocabularies?
  • Where is human rights leadership located – in the minds of individuals, in relationships and interactions, in structures and hierarchies?
  • How can leadership and organisation for human rights activism be developed, supported, and strengthened in the context of competing crises?
  • How can we critically examine leadership within our own organisations and networks in a context of diminishing civil and political space?
  • To what extent are values negotiable in human rights leadership and how does context-sensitivity affect modes of organising and leadership (hierarchical/horizontal)?

Event programme