Trajectories of human rights change

Dr Hans-Otto Sano, Senior Researcher and former Research Director, will retire from the Danish Institute for Human Rights (the Institute) in December 2022. Hans-Otto Sano was employed at the Danish Institute for Human Rights in 1997 and has worked at the Institute since then, interrupted only by a three-year employment as Senior Program Officer at the World Bank’s Nordic Trust Fund. During his more than 20 years at Institute, he has contributed in important ways to the field of human rights research in Denmark and internationally, not least with his focus on how human rights can contribute to bringing positive change for marginalized groups.

With this seminar, we wish to honour and thank Hans-Otto Sano. Under the heading "Trajectories of Human Rights Change", we will use the seminar as an opportunity to learn about, reflect on, and discuss, some of the important topics that he has focused on in his work. Bringing together a group of internationally renowned human rights scholars, the seminar will explore different aspects of human rights change from theoretical, legal, and rights-based perspectives, presenting new insights on human rights compliance, processes of implementation, and learnings from positive or negative processes of change.

Deadline for registration is Tuesday November 1st, 2022. Please use the form at the end of this page.

Programme

• 10:00: Welcome by Pernille Boye Koch, Research Director, the Danish Institute for Human Rights
• 10:15: Introducing Session I by Morten Kjaerum, Director, Raoul Wallenberg Institute
• 10:20: Examining the Pathways to Human Rights Change by Hans-Otto Sano, Senior Researcher, the Danish Institute for Human Rights
• 10:50: The (Mis)Appropriation of Human Rights by the New Global Right by Katharine Young, Professor and Associate Dean of Faculty, Boston College Law School
• 11:20: Plenary discussion, chair: Morten Kjaerum
• 12:00: Lunch
• 13:30:  Introducing Session II by Elin Wrzoncki, Department Director of Human Rights and Business, the Danish Institute for Human Rights
• 13:40: Reflections on the role of supranational human rights bodies in triggering implementation processes: the experiences of the African human rights system by Rachel Murray, Professor of International Human Rights, University of Bristol
• 14:10: Closing the Circle of Implementation: The Sustainable Development Goals, Universal Periodic Review, and the Rights-based Approach to Development by Joel Oestreich, Professor of Politics and Global Studies, Drexel University
• 14:40: Business and human rights change: How far have we come? How far to go? by Claire Methven O’Brien, Senior Researcher, the Danish Institute for Human Rights
• 15:10: Plenary discussion, chair: Elin Wrzoncki
• 16:00: Concluding remarks by Hans-Otto Sano
• 16:15: Reception

About the participants

Pernille Boye Koch is Research Director at the Danish Institute for Human Rights. She holds a PhD in constitutional law from University of Copenhagen and has been a visiting scholar at the European University Institute in Florence. Her research interests lie in constitutional law, public law and human rights law. More specifically, her fields of expertise include ministerial accountability, civil servant norms, access to information in public administration and democratic oversight of intelligence services. She has published extensively on these topics, and is a frequent commentator in Danish media.

Claire Methven O’Brien is Senior Researcher at the Danish Institute for Human Rights and Lecturer at University of Dundee as well as an Honorary Lecturer in the School of Management at the University of St. Andrews. She was recently appointed Member of the Scottish Human Rights Commission. Her research interests lie in the field of business and human rights, and she has published extensively on this topic, including the Council of Europe’s Business and human rights. A Handbook for Legal Practitioners (2019), Public procurement and human rights: Opportunities, Risks and Dilemmas for the State as Buyer (Edward Elgar, 2019), and Research Methods in Human Rights (forthcoming). She has been invited to provide analysis and present her research by the governments of the United States and Japan, the European Parliament, the International Organisation of Employers, International Chambers of Commerce, International Bar Association, the Council of Europe, amongst others.

Morten Kjærum is Director of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law (RWI) in Sweden. Kjaerum was the first director of the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights in Vienna, and founding Director of the Danish Institute for Human Rights. He has been a member of CERD and chair of ICC/GANHRI as well as chaired the group of Directors of EU Agencies. Currently, he serves as Chair of The Board of ECRE and is appointed by the UN Secretary General as member of the UN Voluntary Fund for Technical Cooperation (VFTC) in the Field of Human Rights and of the Voluntary Fund for Financial and Technical Assistance in the Implementation of the Universal Periodic Review. Kjaerum was appointed adjunct professor at the University of Aalborg, Denmark in 2013. He has published extensively on human rights, recently co-editing the books Research Handbook on Human Rights and Poverty (Edward Elgar, 2021) and Covid-19 and Human Rights (Routledge, 2021).

Rachel Murray is Professor of International Human Rights Law at the University of Bristol and Director of its Human Rights Implementation Centre. Rachel undertakes regular work on the African human rights system, implementation of human rights law, OPCAT and torture prevention, among other areas. She has written widely in this area (e.g. Implementation of the Findings of the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, with Debbie Long, Cambridge University Press, 2015; The Optional Protocol to the UN Convention Against Torture, OUP, with Steinerte, Evans and Hallo de Wolf), and articles in leading legal human rights journals. She also advises national, regional, and international organisations as well as governments and individuals on human rights law. She is on the board of the Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa, and is a Fellow of the Human Rights Centre at the University of Essex and a member of Doughty Street Chambers.

Joel Oestreich is Professor of Politics and Global Studies at Drexel University, specializing in International Relations. His primary areas of research include international organizations, international finance, development, and human rights. His 2017 book from Oxford University Press, Development and Human Rights: Rhetoric and Reality in India, examined the link between development and human rights in India. Other publications include e.g. International Organizations as Independent Actors:  Framework for Analysis (Routledge, 2012), Power and Principle: Human Rights Programming in International Organizations (Georgetown University Press, 2007) and, most recently, “Headwinds and Tailwinds to the Rights-based Approach to Development” (The Journal of Human Rights). Oestreich has been a visiting Research Scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi and a visiting Teaching Fellow at the University of Abomey-Calavi, in Benin. He is chair of the International Organization Section of the International Studies Association (ISA). From 2007-2018 he served as the director of the International Area Studies/Global Studies major at Drexel.

Hans-Otto Sano is Senior Researcher and former Research Director at the Danish Institute for Human Rights. His research interests include development, poverty, good governance, human rights-based approaches, human rights indicators, and human rights research methodologies. Sano has written extensively on these topics, including both academic and policy-oriented analyses. Together with colleagues from the Word Bank, and the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, Sano edited the volume on Research Methods in Human Rights (Edward Elgar 2017). An updated and revised version will be published in 2023. Other publications include “Human Rights indicators in development: definitions, relevance and current trends” (Critical Issues in Human Rights and Development, Edward Elgar, 2021, with Siobhan McInerney-Lankford) and “Strengths and Weaknesses in a Human Rights-Based Approach to International Development: An analysis of a rights-based approach to development assistance based on practical experiences” (The International Journal of Human Rights, 2017, with Morten Broberg). Sano has been an Associate Professor at University of Roskilde, and has also worked as Senior Program Officer at the World Bank’s Nordic Trust Fund.

Katharine Young serves as the Associate Dean for Faculty and Global Programs, Professor, and Dean’s Distinguished Scholar at Boston College Law School. Her research interests lie in comparative constitutional law, international human rights law, and law and gender. Young’s monograph, Constituting Economic and Social Rights (Oxford University Press), is published in the Oxford Constitutional Theory series. Other publications include “Human Rights Originalism” (Georgetown Law Journal), “Rights and Queues: Distributive Contests in the Modern State” (Columbia Journal of Transnational Law) selected for the 2016 Harvard/Stanford/Yale Junior Faculty Forum, and “The Minimum Core of Economic and Social Rights: A Concept in Search of Content” (Yale Journal of International Law). She has also edited The Future of Economic and Social Rights (Cambridge University Press) with a foreword by Amartya Sen, and The Public Law of Gender (Cambridge University Press).

Elin Wrzoncki is the Department Director for Human Rights and Business at the Danish Institute for Human Rights. Between 2014 and 2020 she was a Programme Manager of the Business & Accountability Programme at the Institute. Elin is a leading expert on business and human rights, and has worked on a range of issues related to this, including human rights impact assessments, non-judicial remedy mechanisms in business-related human rights abuses, due diligence and regulatory initiatives, and National Action Plans on business and human rights. She has advised and worked with various actors including companies, NHRIs and civil society, both nationally and internationally. Before joining DIHR in 2014, she was the Head of the Globalization and Human Rights Desk at the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), where she was in particular supporting national human rights NGOs to document business impacts on human rights and advocating for corporate accountability. She holds a Master’s Degree in Political Sciences from Sciences-Po in Paris (1999) and from Uppsala University in Sweden (2000).

Please note the seminar will be held in English.

Registration

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