Conference on redrafting human rights law takes place Friday

WHAT
“Drafting the Future of Human Rights,” a conference to launch the drafting of a new international human rights document modeled after the United Nation’s influential Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other documents. The event is free, open to the public, and is being sponsored by the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.

Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and a former United Nations high commissioner for human rights, will open the event. Her address will be followed by discussions among business leaders, judges, and professors of history and law. Conference information is online at: http://www.draftinghumanrights.berkeley.edu/2008conference/.

After the conference, reporters are welcome to cover an address by Karima Bennoune, an Amnesty International USA board member and Rutgers University professor, at a related private dinner event.

WHEN
Friday, Feb. 29, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The dinner event will be at 6 p.m.

WHERE
Booth Auditorium, UC Berkeley School of Law, northwest corner of Bancroft Way at Piedmont Avenue. See the campus map at: http://www.berkeley.edu/map/. The private dinner will be at Adagia, a restaurant across from the law school.

WHO
Additional participants will include Robert Haas, chairman emeritus of Levi Strauss & Co.; Christopher Edley, dean of the law school, and scholars from UC Berkeley and other colleges and universities.

DETAILS
This project-launching event coincides with the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the U.N. in 1948. That document, according to the United Nation’s Web site, “has inspired more than 60 human rights documents which together constitute an international standard of human rights.” It addresses fundamental individual rights to freedom; non-discrimination; and civil, political, social and economic rights.

The project led by the law school’s new International Convention on Human Rights Research Project, seeks to expand the human rights aspects of the current U.N. document and to more effectively address such issues as global warming, regional conflicts that threaten to erupt in war, pandemics, sweatshop working conditions and environmental pollution. The project’s document also will be modeled after the European Convention on Human Rights.