Poverty, Human Rights and Inequality: How to Address the Post-Pandemic Poverty Crisis

Following the Covid-19 pandemic, the world now faces a crisis of poverty that has been severely aggravated over the past 15 months. Years of work eradicating extreme poverty have been brushed away on all continents.

This webinar will focus on the intersection between poverty, human rights, and inequality.

• How does inequality extend beyond economics to, for example, inhibit democratic participation and reinforce social exclusion?
• How has the COVID-19 pandemic interacted with and aggravated these aspects of inequality?
• Is inequality, whether economic or social, a human rights violation, and what is the role of international institutions and private entities in addressing the range of inequalities?  

The panel will address these and other aspects of the post-pandemic challenge drawing on their rich knowledge and insights as well as their contributions to the newly published book, Research Handbook on Human Rights and Poverty, edited by Professor Martha Davis, Morten Kjaerum and Amanda Lyons.

>> Register online

Agenda

Part I: Poverty, Human Rights and the SDG’s
Introduction by Morten Kjaerum
Introduction to the book: ‘Poverty and Human Rights’, Routledge; Edited by Martha F.Davis, Amanda Lyons, Morten Kjaerum.
Expert speeches
Part II:  Discussion

Panelists & Moderators

Panelists

Lucy Williams, professor of law and faculty director of the Center for Public Interest Advocacy and Collaboration at Northeastern University School of Law,  is an internationally recognized authority on welfare law, low-wage labor, nd  global poverty. She is convener of the International Social and Economic Rights Project (iSERP), a group of international academics, judges and activists working to encourage and develop critical and transformative thinking about socio-economic rights.

Domingo Lovera-Parmois is an associate professor of Law at Universidad Diego Portales (Chile). Ll.M. Columbia University (2007), Ph.D. Osgoode Hall Law School (2016). His research focuses on the right to protest and constitutional law, social rightsand constitutional rights of children. He teaches constitutional law at Universidad Diego Portales.

Gay McDougall is a distinguished scholar in residence at Fordham Law School.  She served for eight years on the UN CERD Committee – the first American to serve on that body — and for six years as the UN Special Rapporteur on minorities.  President Biden has nominated her as a member of the CERD Committee.

Gillian MacNaughton is an associate professor in the School for Global Inclusion and Social Development and a senior fellow with the Center for Peace, Democracy and Development in the McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies  at University of Massachusetts, Boston. 

Moderators

Amanda Lyons

Amanda Lyons, JD, is the executive director at the Human Rights Center at the University of Minnesota Law School, where she teaches a course on Poverty and Human Rights.

Her research and advocacy work has focused on human rights and development, the human right to water and gender justice. Prior to joining the University she worked with human rights organizations in Brazil, Colombia, and the United States.

Martha F. Davis

Martha F. Davis is University Distinguished Professor of Law at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, where she is a faculty co-director of the Program on Human Rights and the Global Economy.

Davis’s publications include Human Rights Advocacy in the United States (co-author) and Global Urban Justice: The Rise of Human Rights Cities (co-editor). She is co-editor of the Human Rights at Home Law Profs Blog and an affiliated scholar of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law.

Morten Kjaerum

Morten Kjærum  is director of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, Lund, Sweden and Adjunct Professor at Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark. He was the first director of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, and Executive Director at the Danish Institute for Human Rights.

He was member of the UN Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination from 2002-08. He is Chair of The Board of the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) and Chairs the Board of Trustees for the UN Voluntary Fund for Technical Cooperation in the field of Human Rights appointed by the UN Secretary General. He has consistently written on human rights issues.

You are welcome to join the discussion. We hope to see you there..!

About the book

Research Handbook on Human Rights and Poverty

The book is one of Edgar Routledge’s Research Handbooks in the Human Rights series:

It explores the nexus between human rights, poverty and inequality as a critical lens for understanding and addressing key challenges of the coming decades, including the objectives set out in the Sustainable Development Goals.

The Research Handbook starts from the premise that poverty is not solely an issue of minimum income. It explores the profound ways that deprivation and distributive inequality of power and capability relate to economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights.

The book was edited by Martha F. Davis, University Distinguished Professor, Northeastern University School of Law, US, Morten Kjaerum, Adjunct Professor, University of Aalborg, Denmark and Director of Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, Lund, Sweden and Amanda Lyons, Executive Director and Lecturer in Law, Human Rights Center, University of Minnesota Law School, US

Get the book