Dreamin'

I've been attending a lot of events on the UChicago campus recently. My email explodes daily with the list serve announcements that I'm signed up for, and I am certainly reaping the benefits of others' (overpriced?) education. I'm going full-scale nerd at it.

Last night I attended the first in a three-part lecture series by a visiting scholar (Elizabeth Borgwardt), titled "Transformation of the Modern International Human Rights Regime." The lecture was less depressing than I had anticipated, and focused primarily on the Atlantic Charter. This document was the result of a weekend conference held off the coast of Newfoundland between Great Britain and the United States. It was July of 1941, and this date is striking for one reason. The Atlantic Charter was a declaration of wartime and peacetime aims and goals... and the United States had not yet entered the war. Churchill left his battle weary nation to attend the conference, and what resulted was what is perhaps the first declaration of human rights that transcends the status of sovereign nations to include ALL INDIVIDUALS EVERYWHERE. FDR had already proclaimed some of this in his State of the Union Speech in January (a speech known as the Four Freedoms Speech), in which he articulated four freedoms that he believed were entitled to all people in the world: the freedom of speech and expression, the freedom of worship, the freedom from want, and the freedom from fear. Interesting from a president who would keep his country out of the war for another 11 months, but eh.

Churchill had a rather different interpretation of the charter, perhaps because of the rampant hypocrisy that Great Britain was demonstrating with its continued colonization of India... he thought the charter applied primarily to the countries in Europe engaged in the war, and the European governments in exile at the time. Regardless, this moment in history was the first multilateral statement of human rights ever issued in the world. It advocated for traditional political rights, included a broader reference to the Four Freedoms (including economic justice), mentioned INDIVIDUAL human rights, and sought recognition both domestically and internationally. It was apparently kind of a big deal...

Next up? "Challenges in Combating Torture" with Juan E. Mendez. Check out this guy's credentials, and tell me you DON'T want to be a nerd too.

Juan E. Méndez is the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment and the author – with Marjorie Wentworth – of "Taking a Stand: The Evolution of Human Rights" (New York: Palgrave-MacMillan, October 2011). Until May 2009 he was the President of the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ). Concurrently, he was Kofi Annan’s Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide (2004 to 2007). Between 2000 and 2003 he was a member of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States, and its President in 2002. He teaches human rights at American University in Washington and at Oxford University (UK). In the past he has taught also at Notre Dame Law School (USA), Georgetown and Johns Hopkins. He worked for Human Rights Watch (1982-1996) and directed the Inter-American Institute on Human Rights in San Jose, Costa Rica (1996-1999). As a labor and human rights lawyer in Argentina, Méndez was himself imprisoned and tortured during Argentina’s “Dirty War.”