The Global Justice Academy from the University of Edinburgh organised a webinar called “Incorporating Human Rights into the New Chilean Constitution” aimed at discussing how the new Constitution should be from a human rights perspective and what provisions it should or could contain.

The speakers included:

• Amaya Alvez. PhD Law University of York. Professor in Constitutional Law, Universidad de Concepción, Chile

• Constanza Salgado. PhD Law University of Edinburgh. Lecturer in Constitutional Law, Universidad Adolfo Ibañez, Chile. 

• Kasey McCall-Smith. PhD Law University of Edinburgh. Senior Lecturer in Public International Law, University of Edinburgh.

• Vicente Silva, LLM in International Human Rights Law, University of Essex. Programme Officer with the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (GI-ESCR).

Our Program Officer, Vicente Silva presented on the role of civil society organisations (CSOs) on the incorporation of economic and social rights in the New Constitution in Chile. During the webinar, Vicente highlighted that CSOs are in a historical and unique position to address historical shortcomings in relation to economic and social rights incorporation into the national legal framework, including the constitution. Instead of focusing on a specific way forward towards rights incorporation, he rather offered three general criteria and guidelines that CSOs could follow in order to have a meaningful impact on the process of incorporating rights into the new constitution. First, the relevance of strengthening spaces for participation and dialogue. Second, the importance of building and supporting collective action through collaboration across a wide range of disciplines and organisations. Third, the need to move towards evidence-based advocacy in relation to economic and social rights incorporation. On this point, Vicente urged to return to the holistic understanding of human rights in which ESCR have the same weight and are equally important as civil and political rights, and to dispel some myths and misconceptions around current economic and social rights debates. Finally, our Program Officer called to take advantage of the window of opportunity offered by the constitutional process to collectively think on the value of economic, social and environmental rights for the construction of a new social pact.