Politicization of the International Human Rights Agenda: A Conversation with the Experts

To promote critical thinking on human rights, GI-ESCR joined forces with Middlesex University, London, and Universidad Autónoma de Tlaxcala, Mexico, to launch the book: 'In Defense of Politicization of Human Rights: The UN Special Procedures', authored by Dr. Elvira Dominguez-Redondo.

The book argues that the operational flexibility, visibility, status, and methods of work of Special Procedures, demonstrates that States' involvement in the functioning of expert-led human rights mechanisms, may be more beneficial than detrimental to the advancement of the international human rights agenda. The book partly addresses the critique of international human rights law expressed by some scholars, which it argues have hollowed out the movement creating room for its exploitation by populists, to the deterioration of the rights climate. Drawing on nearly seventy-five years of UN documents, Special Procedures' practice and State initiatives and responses concerning the objection, articulation, scrutiny, and critique of human rights, the book also finds little basis for the popular conception of a progressive 'North' and a regressive 'South' in terms of global politics concerned with human rights.

At the event, participated as a panelist GI-ESCR Executive Director, Magdalena Sepúlveda together with Soledad García Muñoz, Special Rapporteur on Economic, Social, Cultural, and Environmental Rights of the Organization of American States and Jose A. Guevara Bermudez, member of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions. At the event, there were additional interventions from Joshua Castellino, Executive Director of Minority Rights International; Colin Gonsalves, Senior Advocate of the Supreme Court of India and the founder of Human Rights Law Network; Philip Leach, Director European Human Rights Advocacy Centre; Inga Winkler, Institute of Human Rights of Columbia University and Alicia Cebada, Professor of International Law at University Carlos III Madrid.

The video of the event is available HERE.