René Cassin & Liberal Jewish Synagogue Event
Tuesday 10 September 2019
Liberal Jewish Synagogue
28 St John’s Wood Rd, London NW8 7HA
6.30pm refreshments, 7pm lecture
Free event, all welcome
Register via Eventbrite
*** Update after the event ***
A report on this lecture appears on the RightInfo website:
“Three Ways Jewish Experience Inspired Human Rights”
80 years after the start of the Second World War and 70 years from the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, where are we heading now?
The foundation stone of international human rights law – 1948’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights – was partly a response to the horrors of war and genocide. The Declaration’s preamble could hardly have been more explicit: “Disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind.”
Academic and human rights activist, Professor Francesca Klug explores the origins of this landmark document, its roots in Jewish experience and the influence of Jewish values and authors on its vision for a better world.
In 1939, nationalism, intolerance and xenophobia plunged the world into a war that plumbed the depths of human depravity. Eighty years later, with some of those same threats to our multicultural democracy on the rise, Francesca considers if the Declaration has fulfilled its promise as the dawn of a new era. More importantly, she asks what today’s volatile world can learn from the human rights pioneers who brought the Declaration to life.
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Speaker:
Professor Francesca Klug
Francesca has been a human rights activist and academic for over 30 years.
A former Commissioner on the Equality and Human Rights Commission, she advised the then Labour government on the model for incorporating the ECHR into UK law via the Human Rights Act.
Francesca was formerly a research Professor at the LSE Centre for the Study of Human Rights and Director of Human Rights Futures. She is now a visiting Professor at the LSE, and at the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice at Sheffield Hallam.
Francesca has delivered a series of lectures in different parts of the UK over the last year to mark the 70th anniversary but this is the first to focus on the significant Jewish connection to the UDHR. Her aim is to reconnect a primarily Jewish audience to this powerful legacy.
