Policy Seminars

May 2009 saw the arrival of BIHR's new policy seminar series, kindly funded by the Nuffield Foundation. The seminars seek to generate fresh perspectives on human rights issues in Britain, and involve a range of thinkers and influencers from across the political spectrum and various academic disciplines.

The first of the two May seminars explored economic, social and cultural rights, looking at other countries that have made these rights enforceable and what the UK can learn from their experiences. The seminar drew on the insights of Janet Love, national director of South Africa's largest public interest law clinic the Legal Resources Centre in South Africa, and Ellie Palmer, Senior Lecturer in Public Law and Human Rights at Essex University.

The second seminar focused on measuring human rights. In other words, how can we tell whether activities designed to ‘bring rights to life' actually make a difference? Dr Todd Landmann and Edzia Carvalho (Essex University) explored the development of a human rights measurement framework, followed by Dr Paul Gready (York University) who examined how we can evaluate human rights activities in ways which capture the qualitative difference they make.

Short reports of the seminars will be published here soon.