The Law and Politics of Institutional Change: Workshop Summary
On 9th and 10th October, the IAHRN held the second workshop in a three-part series which examined the development, impact and future of the Inter-American Human Rights System (IAHRS).
The workshop, entitled “The IAHRS: Law and Politics of Institutional Change”, was held at University College London’s Institute of the Americas and featured 35 experts on human rights issues and the Inter-American system. Presenters included IAHRN members from European, Latin and North American academic institutions, prominent human rights practitioners and users of the IAHRS, and a number of other specially invited guests.
Discussions covered a wide range of topics, including: the evolution and expansion of the system’s instruments over time; the potential impact of extra-regional developments on human rights norms and sovereignty; episodes of political crisis and backlash by states against the system; and the alternative routes of future development of the system.
A full summary of the various presentations and discussions (including participants’ biographical details) is now available. In addition, a selection of the papers presented during the event will subsequently be further developed and published as a special edition of an academic human rights journal in 2016.
The next IAHRN workshop will be held at the University of Ghent’s Human Rights Centre in January 2016. This event, the final in the current series, will involve a comparative discussion of the positive and negative aspects of the various regional and international human rights mechanisms which are today available.
