RightsUp: The Oxford Human Rights Hub Podcast

Constitutions are the legal bedrock of many countries, but they're also political, and are produced within a specific socio-historical context, much like any text. As much as Constitutions are there to protect citizens, they can also exclude certain groups of people. And when a Constitution doesn't work for all, how do we best address this? To what extent can we reinterpret a Constitution so it's...

Covid-19 lockdowns worldwide have forced huge portions of our lives online, from education to work, with important human rights ramifications. But there's an argument to be made that the Covid-19 lockdown has been good for the environment. there have been reports of lower levels of littering and urban pollution. As humans withdrew from public spaces, some native wildlife has reemerged. But our new...

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought questions around global healthcare financing and equitable access to treatments to the fore. But this is not the first time a spotlight has been thrown on the thorny issue of fair resource allocation in efforts to tackle global health issues. In her book, “The Uncounted: Politics of Data in Global Health” (Cambridge University Press), Dr Sara Davis considers how h...

In 2016, a peace agreement was negotiated between the Colombian  Government and one guerrilla movement known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or the FARC. But the peace deal was rejected by a narrow margin in a referendum in 2016. A revised peace deal was eventually ratified by the Congress of Colombia. The peace agreement provides for the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, a tribu...

The spread of Covid-19 has affected many areas of our lives with major implications for our rights and freedoms. The instigation of a UK-wide lockdown has had an especially pronounced effect on our rights, and the burden of this disruption will fall most heavily on those whose livelihoods, health, and security were already fragile. Furloughed employees, those who are self-employed, and those who m...

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all of us in many ways. States around the world have imposed restrictions of varying levels of stringency to control the spread of the virus. The Central Government in India introduced a nationwide 21-day lockdown on 24th of March 2020. The lockdown saw an almost complete restriction on the movement of people and the closure of all establishments except those pro...

In this episode, we discuss the intersection between the responses to public health crisis and human rights with Luisa Cabal, Acting Director of the Community Support, Social Justice, and Inclusion at UNAIDS. UNAIDS recently published a guidance paper of lessons learned from other pandemics, such as the HIV pandemic, about how to respect and uphold human rights during exceptional ti...

This is a special episode of RightsUp, which takes Sandy Fredman’s new book, Comparative Human Rights Law, as a starting point for global conversation around the role of law, lawyers, courts, and judges in forwarding human rights in different contexts. Each episode will delve into the overarching themes of the book and highlight some specific examples from different jurisdictions -- on issues such...

This is a special episode of RightsUp, which takes Sandy Fredman’s new book, Comparative Human Rights Law, as a starting point for global conversation around the role of law, lawyers, courts, and judges in forwarding human rights in different contexts. Each episode will delve into the overarching themes of the book and highlight some specific examples from different jurisdictions -- on issues such...

This is a special episode of RightsUp, which takes Sandy Fredman’s new book, Comparative Human Rights Law, as a starting point for global conversation around the role of law, lawyers, courts, and judges in forwarding human rights in different contexts. Each episode will delve into the overarching themes of the book and highlight some specific examples from different jurisdictions -- on issues such...

The United Nations adopted the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015. They aim to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all people. The goals provide policy objectives for countries to aspire to meet over a number of years. In this final episode of our SDG podcast series, we talk about how the Sustainable Development Goals and human rights can work together to achieve transform...

SDG Goal 1 is to eliminate poverty in all its forms everywhere. Poverty stands in the way of people enjoying many of their basic human rights and it can also be the product of violations of certain rights, like the right to education. Tackling global poverty requires bridging questions of human rights law and economic development. In this episode, Professor Philip Alston (UN Special Rapporteur on...

[Original release: 7 September 2018] Sustainable Development Goal number 1 is to end poverty in all its forms everywhere. And the targets specifically state that poverty must be eliminated for all men, women and children. But poverty affects these groups differently, and the causes of poverty for men, women, and children also differ. Empirical evidence tells us that women disproportionately live i...

[Original release: 13 July 2018] Sustainable Development Goal number 5 is to ‘achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.’ One of the targets under Goal 5 is to eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early, and forced marriage, and female genital mutilation, or FGM. In this episode, we talk with Brenda Kelly, a consultant obstetrician at the John Radcliffe Hospital and a foun...

[Original release: 23 April 2018] The death penalty was written into the colonial penal code in India when the country was under British direct rule, and it stayed on the books after independence. Today India remains a ‘retentionist’ country – meaning that it retains the death penalty in the face of a growing global movement to abolish it worldwide on human rights grounds. At the end of 2017, ther...

[Original release: 10 April 2018] There is an unmistakable growing awareness of the ways in which our human lives and the environment are intertwined and interdependent. Unprecedented environmental degradation, resource depletion, and the looming reality of climate change have all drawn anxious attention to the human impact on the environment. Law is critically important here. Countries like Spain...

[Original release: 26 March 2018] Sustainable Development Goal 5 is to ‘achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.’ But gender equality cuts across many of the other sustainable development goals. This raises some questions – about whether gender equality can ever be realised on its own, in its own right – or whether it has to be realised in context. In this episode, we explore devel...

[Original release: 12 March 2018] In September 2015, the UN adopted a set of goals to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all people. But do we integrate human rights into development agendas? What will the relationship between human rights and the Sustainable Development Goals look like in practice? **This episode is part of a special series on “Working Together: Human Right...

[Released: 29 January 2018] Almost exactly a year ago, in January 2017, the UK Department of Education published a report by the Disabled Students Sector Leadership Group (DSSLG) which offered guidance on how universities and other higher education providers could better support disabled students. In this episode, Dr Marie Tidball talks about disability rights and the importance of teaching a new...

[Original release: 14 December 2017] UK and EU equality law has evolved very much in parallel, with regular exchange and cross-pollination. The present Equality and Human Rights Commission, which is responsible for law in England, Scotland, and Wales, was established by the Equality Act of 2006. The Equality Commission for Northern Ireland was established with the Northern Ireland Act of 1998, a c...

[Original release: 8 December 2017] Just this morning, news broke that the UK has reached a deal with the EU. Theresa May announced that there would be no hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, the Good Friday Agreement would be upheld, and that EU citizens’ rights would be protected in the UK. Few details about the agreement are available, and there are still many questions about how t...

[Original release: 20 September 2017] There are many ways in which private businesses hold financial and political power akin to states. They also commit violations and abuses of power akin to states. But are they held accountable in the same way that states are? This episode is all about whether corporations should have human rights obligations – should they be responsible for upholding and defen...

[Original release: 1 August 2017] Following U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, what is the future of environmental justice and human rights in the United States and the world? We talk with environmental human rights expert and lawyer, Nick Stump, about what we can learn from the experiences of the Appalachian region of the U.S. Appalachia is known...

[Original release: 30 May 2017] In May of 2016, the Obama administration issued federal guidance that stated transgender people are protected according to United States civil rights law preventing sex discrimination in schools. It was a historic move, in response to a wave of cases making their way through federal courts regarding discrimination against transgender people. But in February 2017, th...

[Original release: 12 May 2017] Since the 1973 Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade, abortion has been legal in the United States. But terminating pregnancy remains a controversial issue, and it plays a surprisingly large role in American politics. In this episode, we talk to Carol Sanger, professor of law at Columbia University and author of 'About Abortion: Terminating Pregnancy in 21st Century A...