The 'Current Issues in Human Rights Research' Lecture Series
The Norwegian Centre for Human Rights invites several leading academic professors from across the globe to give presentations on their cutting edge research within the field of Human Rights this fall. The aim of the lecture series is to explore Human Rights research from several viewpoints and disciplines.
About the Lecture
Since the end of the Second World War, development discourse has gone through multiple iterations, many of which coexist today and find expression in various development agendas.
China’s Global Development Initiative (GDI) is no exception. With its promise of a depoliticized, people-centered approach to achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the GDI is a looking glass into a shifting global development agenda that seeks to re-position material wellbeing at the root of all human rights. As global development discourse cycles through its protean guises, does the GDI represent a return to a needs-based approach to development? If so, then does the GDI present an opportunity or a threat to the realization of the rights-based SDG Agenda?
The GDI, in line with existing development paradigms, cannot be decoupled from political ideologies and foreign policy agendas. Along with the Global Civilization and Security Initiatives, the GDI is a signal of China’s ambition to reshape the international order. This presentation aims to answer these questions by identifying the points of departure and convergence from the assumptions underpinning the 2030 Agenda and those which have shaped the GDI.
About the lecturer
Professor Nandini Ramanujam is a full professor at the Faculty of Law, McGill University. She is Co-Director and Director of Programs of the Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism and also directs the International Human Rights Internship Program as well as Independent Human Rights Internships Program. She is the McGill representative for the Scholars at Risk Network and served on the Steering Committee of the Scholars at Risk Network, Canada section from 2016-22. Her research and teaching interests include Law and Development, Institutions and Governance, Economic Justice, Food Security and Food Safety, the role of civil society and the Fourth Estate (Media) in promotion of the rule of law, as well as the exploration of interconnections between fields based human rights work and theoretical discourses.
Practical information
Moderator: Professor Peris S. Jones (NCHR).
The lecture will be held at Domus Juridica. Due to limited space, participants will have to register prior to the lecture.