Venice Academy of Human Rights

9-18 July 2012

'The Limits of Human Rights'

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Faculty of the Venice Academy 2012

Philip Alston, John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law at New York University School of Law and former Special Rapporteur of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions

Erika Feller, UNHCR Assistant High Commissioner for Protection

Martti Koskenniemi, Academy Professor of International Law at the University of Helsinki and Director of the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights

Friedrich Kratochwil, Recurrent Visiting Professor at the Department of International Relations and European Studies at the Central European University and Former Professor of International Relations at the European University Institute

Bruno Simma, William W. Cook Global Law Professor at the University of Michigan Law School and former Judge at the International Court of Justice

Henry Steiner, Jeremiah Smith, Jr. Professor of Law, Emeritus at Harvard Law School

Theme: The Limits of Human Rights 

The general theme of the Venice Academy of Human Rights 2012 is 'The Limits of Human Rights'. The aim is not a denial of the importance of human rights but an unvarnished look at discrepancies between human rights thought and scholarship as opposed to the realities in politics and in the field. While human rights have been an important emancipatory tool, there have always been voices highlighting exclusionary effects and insensitivities to particularities of culture, gender or religion. Others warn against a depolitisation of human rights through an increasing administration by legal experts and institutional bureaucracies. Today, challenges to national security and contemporary forms of warfare motivate questions about the effectiveness, the meaning and limits of human rights internationally as much as the complexities of immigration and integration do this nationally. The possible limits, blind spots and downsides are hence traceable in the political and moral life of pluralist societies, in the activities of international and regional organisations, in contemporary armed conflicts and in the very orthodoxies and paradigms of intellectual approaches to human rights. The Venice Academy provides an open forum to discuss these and other issues related to the promises and limits of what human rights and “universal” values can possibly achieve.

General Description