Essex Public International Law Lecture: The Travels of Human Rights: The UNESCO Human Rights Exhibition 1950-53

Please join us for the latest instalment of the Essex Public International Law Lecture Series.

The Essex Public International Law Lecture Series welcomes you to to the latest instalment presented by Professor Hilary Charlesworth, Melbourne Laureate Professor, University of Melbourne and chaired by Dr Emily Jones from the School of Law at the University of Essex.

The Travels of Human Rights: The UNESCO Human Rights Exhibition 1950-53

This paper discusses a travelling exhibition designed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1950 to introduce the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), adopted by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly on 10 December 1948. I will first describe the provenance of the UNESCO exhibition and then discuss how its images relate to the rights contained in the UDHR. While designed to shore up the claims that the rights in the UDHR had a universal origin, these images tell us more than their curators intended about the specificity of the human at the centre of international human rights law.

Speaker

Hilary Charlesworth is a Melbourne Laureate Professor at Melbourne Law School. She is also a Distinguished Professor at the Australian National University. She is a member of the Institut de Droit International and served as Judge ad hoc in the International Court of Justice in the Whaling in the Antarctic case (Australia v Japan) (2011-2014) and is currently Judge ad hoc in the Arbitral Award of 3 October 1899 case (Guyana v Venezuela).