Faculty Research Forum: A Right of Peoples and Individuals to International Solidarity?

Description

The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) Office of Faculty Affairs will host its Faculty Research Forum featuring Obiora Okafor, the chair in international law at Johns Hopkins SAIS, for his inaugural lecture titled "A Right of Peoples and Individuals to International Solidarity?"

The current proposal at the UN Human Rights Council for the emergence of international solidarity as a more widely accepted human right norm has been built, albeit only in part, upon the crystallization of solidarity as a fundamental principle of international law. That this proposal enjoys strong support in many quarters (especially among the UN representatives of Global South countries/peoples) does not, however, necessarily suggest the existence of total global consensus either on the suitability of international solidarity as a human right, or as to the character and orientation of the proposed right. Quite to the contrary, the suitability of international solidarity as either an international human right norm or a legal right remains contested, especially across the Global North/South axis. It is one thing to accept that international solidarity is a structural or foundational principle of international (human rights) law, and another to embrace what I will refer to in this paper as its "human right-ness" (i.e. its fit into what a human right is or is not).

Okafor will explore and attempt to clarify some pertinent questions concerning the candidature for "human right-ness" of the proposed right to international solidarity (while recognizing that international solidarity's status as a foundational or structural principle of international law – and thus of international human rights law – is now beyond reasonable dispute).

University of Oslo faculty member Cecilia Bailliet will join Okafor for the conversation, and Jessica Fanzo, interim vice dean and professor at SAIS, will provide opening remarks.