International Symposium: Human Rights in Troubled Times
available in-person and on Zoom

Thursday, November 21, 2024
Mishael Cheshin Hall (333), 3rd floor, Cheshin Building, Faculty of Law
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mt. Scopus Campus

Hamas' brutal attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, marked a bitter turning point in Israel’s seventy-six-year history. The resulting Israel-Hamas War, which has also inflicted immense suffering on the Palestinian people, has sparked heated debates worldwide. 
Against this backdrop, the aim of the Symposium is twofold: First, we will address a series of questions about the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, which once symbolized the hopeful possibility of a better world. What shapes our understanding and assumptions about human rights? How do core values like human dignity influence our conceptions of who and what human rights should protect and promote? What impact have global developments, such as the Cold War and decolonization, had on human rights discourse? And how can we explain that Jewish lawyers in the 1940s were instrumental in promoting both universal human rights and Zionism, perceiving both as responses to the Nazi regime and the failed minority rights system? Second, interdisciplinary in its approach, the Symposium confronts the historical significance of the human rights discourse and its ongoing relevance for contemporary conflicts. We will address the pressing challenges of democratic erosion worldwide and the devastating collision between war and human rights in our own time.

For the full program click here

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