On Human Rights

Morten Kjaerum, the director of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute, joins us for our latest episode of the On Human Rights Podcast. He talks about his concern for the increasingly authoritarian trends worldwide, mitigating fear and angst, how the human rights world can be more active dealing with inequality, and what he’s hopeful for going forward.

Johan Hassel is the CEO of Global Utmaning, or in English, Global Challenge. This is an independent think tank that promotes long-term solutions to crises and challenges. Hassel is also a member of the Swedish Delegation for the UN's 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

In this episode of "On Human Rights," RWI’s Leila Fall interviews Maryam al-Khawaja. She’s a Bahraini Human rights defender living in exile.

Ted Piccone is a senior fellow with the Project on International Order and Strategy and Latin America Initiative in the Foreign Policy Program at Brookings Institution in Washington DC. He also served eight years as a senior foreign policy advisor in the Clinton administration.

RWI’s Leila Fall recently interviewed Yeonmi Park, a 23-year-old human rights activist from North Korea. When she fled that country in 2007 it was just the beginning of a long journey through the Gobi Desert. She faced starvation, threats, and human trafficking. Today, she wants to spread awareness about the North Korean situation as well as to protect refugees who might have faced situations like...

Jan Eliasson’s resume is as extensive as it is impressive. Amongst other tasks for the Swedish state, he acted as minister for foreign affairs in 2006 and was the Swedish ambassador to the U.N for several years. He has served as Special Envoy to Darfur, Sudan and as President of the UN general assembly. In March 2012, Jan Eliasson was appointed Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations by Sec...

Today we have a special episode from MR-dagarna (Swedish Human Rights Forum) in Malmö, with Alice Wadström from the RWI who is interviewing Cynthia Enloe, a professor known for her work on gender and militarism.

Leyla-Denisa Obreja, a visiting scholar at the RWI and a PhD candidate at Bond University in Australia, whose area of research is intimate partner violence, talks about her project

In our latest episode of "On Human Rights", Alice Wadström sat down with Jude Dibia, a novelist from Nigeria, during the Swedish Human Rights Forum in Malmö, Sweden in November.

Today we have a special interview from MR-dagarna (Swedish Human Rights Forum) in Malmö, with Alice Wadström from the RWI who is interviewing Anders Kompass from the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Kompass worked for the United Nations for a period of 20 years at the end of which he was suspended for exposing the sexual abuse of children by peacekeepers to relevant authorities that led him to...

Lund University and the Raoul Wallenberg Institute just launched a new human rights research hub. It’s one of Europe’s biggest research environments for human rights related issues. At the launch of the hub, Anne Orford delivered the keynote speech. We’ll play it here in its entirety. Anne Orford is the visiting chair of human rights and humanitarian law at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute. She is a...

RWI's senior researcher Radu Mares recently interviewed Kari Tapiola, Special Adviser to the Director-General of the International Labour Organization (ILO).

Dr Nuno Ferreira is a Professor of Law at the University of Sussex, and is Deputy Director of the European Children's Rights Unit, the ECRU. Among other areas, he has worked in LGBT rights, refugee law, and children's rights with a focus on child labour. He was recently awarded a €1 million European Research Council Starting Grant in order to produce a comprehensive analysis of refugees seeking as...

Wanhong Zhang is a visiting professor at RWI, and is a Professor of Jurisprudence at Wuhan University School of Law, in China. He is also the Director of the Wuhan University Public Interest and Development Law Institute. Zhang focuses on human rights and disabilities, as well as business. He met with us to discuss his work with RWI, to give us some insight into human rights challenges in regard t...

Lee Swepston was appointed as the ILO’s Director of the Department of Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, and Senior Adviser on Human Rights in 2004. He has worked in many areas including children's rights, indigenous and tribal peoples, non-discrimination, abolition of forced labour, and freedom of association. Lee retired from ILO in 2007 and became a consultant. He lectures on internatio...

Brian Burdekin is an International Adviser to numerous National Human Rights Institutions. He was Special Adviser on National Institutions to the first three United Nations High Commissioners for Human Rights. Burdekin was also Federal Human Rights Commissioner of Australia, and was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in 1995. He was kind enough to share some of his invaluable knowledge in r...

Gay McDougall is a Human rights activist and lawyer. She is a Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at the Leitner Center on International Law and Justice at Fordham University Law School, and is a member of the United Nation’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. We spoke with her about CERD and racial discrimination.

Barbara Oomen is the Dean of University College, Roosevelt and Professor of Law at Utrecht University, and the co-editor of a new book, “Global Urban Justice: The Rise of Human Rights Cities.” She joined us at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law to talk about the rise of human rights cities around the globe.

Suzanne Dovi, an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Arizona, will speak at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute about the kind of voice victims are given in the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Dr. Mart Susi is an Associate Professor of Human Rights Law at Tallinn University. He visited the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law on 19 May to deliver a presentation titled: “Protecting freedom of expression in new media – mission impossible?”. We met with him to discuss the matter further.

Dr. Benjamin Gregg is a professor of Social and Political Theory at the University of Texas, at Austin. He's the Fulbright Visiting Professor at Johannes Kepler University of Linz, Austria. He spoke with us about his work and his recently published book "The Human Rights State: Justice Within and Beyond Sovereign Nations."

Michal Balcerzak is a professor of international human rights law at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Poland. We spoke to him about his work as a member of the UN’s working group Committee of Experts on People of African Descent.

Phillip Tahmindjis is the Director of the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute. He joins us today from London to talk about a new report he co-edited on the role of the universal periodic review in advancing human rights in the administration of justice.

Sumudu Atapattu is the director of research centers at the University of Wisconsin Law School in the United States. She talks to us about the connection between climate change and human rights and why it matters.

Professor Emeritus Göran Melander, founder of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, talks about the breakthroughs and steps taken in the field of human rights, the many challenging situations in today’s world, and identifies one violation of human rights where lack of knowledge is a huge problem.