Responding to the Global Economic Crisis – Are Human Rights Relevant?

Organized by the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR), ESCR-Net and Center of Concern, the key objectives of this public meeting will be to reflect on the global economic and financial crisis from a human rights perspective and to advocate a human rights based response. The meeting will examine the extent to which commitments to a human rights approach made at the Human Rights Council's Special Session in February 2009 and the UN General Assembly meeting in June 2009 have remained rhetorical or have been translated into concrete and practical policies and actions. The goal will also be to generate debate on the best concrete proposals for how human rights can contribute to defining national and global policy responses to the crisis, and how the Human Rights Council, its special procedures, and non-governmental human rights organizations, as well as States, can play a role in this work. The meeting title is deliberately provocative in order to encourage debate from a wide variety of different perspectives.

Panelists include:

Magdalena Sepulveda, UN Independent Expert on human rights and extreme poverty

Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food

Radhika Balakrishnan, Executive Director of the Center for Women's Global Leadership and Professor of Women's and Gender Studies, Rutgers University

Aldo Caliari, Director of Rethinking Bretton Woods Project, Center of Concern

Chair: Ignacio Saiz, Executive Director of the Center for Economic and Social Rights