Some reflections on the theme:
With the year 2023-2024 marking the 75th anniversary of the UDHR, and the halfway point of the lifespan of the UN鈥檚 Sustainable Development Goals, there is a unique opportunity to reflect on the UN鈥檚 treaty-based and goal-based human rights frameworks and assess their effectiveness. The UN鈥檚 stated aims of promoting international peace and security and human rights seem as elusive as ever as humanitarian crises in several regions of the world worsen and democracy backslides internationally. Regional insecurity seems further likely to persist with deadlock at the UN Security Council, dynamics of great power politics returning in the international system, and weakening state capacity and willingness for multilateral humanitarian interventions, such as UN Peacekeeping Operations. This theme invites prospective authors to consider where the UN ought to go from here and whether, and in what form, organizational reform is required. Must the treaty-based human rights approach embodied by the UDHR be adapted for the inter-state dynamics of the current age? The theme also allows prospective authors to imagine new alternatives or discuss existing ones, independent of the UN system, which still serve to promote the UDHR鈥檚 aims.
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Submissions should be emailed to human.rights [at] mcgill.ca ()
Past themes:
脿 2022-2023: Collective emergence: re-imagining our civic and environmental futures
脿 2021-2022 Theme: Solidarity in an Interconnected World
脿 2020-2021 Theme: Inclusive Citizenship and Deliberative Democracy
脿 2019-2020 Theme: Reclaiming Universal Human Rights in a Plural Global Order: Opportunities and Challenges
脿 2018-2019 Theme: The UDHR at 70; Pasts, Presents and Futures