The world today is on an accelerated path toward rising authoritarianism, widening inequality and unsustainable growth. This time of crisis has strained peaceful relations between people and nations and has caused the decline of human rights.

Scholars have noted changes to global governance, the vulnerability of international institutions, the apparent rise of nationalism and geopolitical spheres of influence, and social conflict generated by global inequality and climate change as some of the phenomena associated with this crisis of world order.

Featuring a keynote from Dr. Albert Barume, UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, this conference seeks to engage the structural forces shaping our world in this moment and explore critically the role and relevance of human rights as a moral, political and legal force for social action and transformative justice.

Where does the human rights project stand in relation to the struggle for human dignity, equality, repair of our relationship to the Earth, and the creation of alternative models of social life and organization? What is the role of legal frameworks and international institutions in ordering the world toward these values? What gives us reason for hope in this moment?

This conference will consist of a conversation around these questions and others provoked by the current crisis of world order for human rights and the human rights project writ large. We will engage a community of scholars and practitioners of human rights from various fields of expertise and institutional positions, from both the global south and north. We hope the conversations will inspire a new way of thinking or imagining human rights for the future, informing our practice and collaborative efforts to build a world of human dignity in line with an ethos of care for each other and the planet.

In-Person Only at UCLA School of Law