Kevin Boyle:
Freedom of Expression: Retrospect and Prospect

The Torkel Opsahl memorial lecture 2007

Time: Monday, May 14, 2007, 15:00 - 16:30
Venue: Gamle Festsal, Urbygningen, University of Oslo, Karl Johans gt. Oslo

Abstract:

This lecture will reflect on the past and on the future of the ideal of freedom of expression as a universal human right first proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948. Its focus will be on the twenty years from 1987 when the international NGO Article 19 was
launched as the Cold War was ending. What has changed and what remains the same after twenty years of challenging censorship and promoting the norm of freedom of expression throughout the world?

During the Cold War debate on the nature of freedom of speech and media freedom was distorted by the ideological competition between East and West. It is only in the last decade that the true complexity of freedom of expression including its linkage with other rights and freedoms has begun to be addressed. Equally the relationship between freedom of expression, development and the building of democratic societies are fresh dimensions of this right that have emerged from post Cold War experience. After 9/11 2001, Islamic radicalism and the War on Terror have created a new global security context. How might this new context shape freedom of expression in the age of the Internet?

Profile of Speaker

Kevin Boyle is professor of law at the University of Essex UK and a barrister at law.  He is director of the University’s Human Rights Centre. He was educated at the Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland, Cambridge University England, and Yale University.

In 2001 -2002 he worked for the United Nations in Geneva as Senior Adviser to Mary Robinson, during her last year as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. He has also been a consultant to the United Nations on human rights issues.

Born in Northern Ireland he moved to the Republic of Ireland in 1978 as professor of law at the National University of Ireland, Galway, where he founded the Irish Centre for Human Rights.  He later moved to London and was the first director of the NGO Article 19: the Global Campaign against Censorship. He has long experience of litigation before the European Court of Human Rights including freedom of expression cases (Purcell and others v. Ireland; Jersild v Denmark; Tekin v Turkey; Bladet Tromsø and Stensaas v.  Norway.)

In 1990 he was appointed to Essex University where he built the University’s world renowned Human Rights Centre.

 

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Torkel Opsahl, (1931 – 1993) Cand. Jur 1955, Dr. juris 1965. Professor in constitutional and international law, University of Oslo from 1965. Member of the European Human Rights Commission between 1970 and 1984. At the same time, from 1977 to 1986, member of the United Nations Human Rights Committee. He worked, together with Jan Helgesen and Asbjørn Eide, for a number of years in order to establish a Norwegian Institute for human rights, and became the founding Chairman of the Institute when it was established in 1987. He took part in two UN missions to prisoner-of-war camps in Iran and Iraq, in 1985 and 1988. From 1992 to 1993 he chaired an independent commission on Northern Ireland. Based on extensive hearings among northern irish citizens the commission issued a number of recommendations that has greatly influenced the political development in Northern Ireland.
At the time of his death he chaired an international expert commission assigned by the UN Secretary General to investigate war crimes in the former Yugoslavia.
Literature: A compilation, spanning a period of more than three decades, of Opsahls writing is available in English: Law and Equality, Selected Articles on Human Rights, AdNotam Gyldendal 1996. Norwegian Centre for Human Rights can supply the book upon request.