Best of: Has the Human Rights framework outlived its purpose?

Strength & Solidarity is taking a break until Season Five starts in October 2023. Meanwhile we’re repeating some of our favourite shows, continuing with episode 3,  first released,  January 5, 2021.

South African human rights lawyer Kayum Ahmed’s entire career has been spent defending and extending the rights of excluded and oppressed people, at home and abroad.  But this former CEO of the South African Human Rights Commission harbors considerable doubt about whether the human rights framework rooted in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights can meet the demands of radical black and brown activists.

In this episode: 

• Host Akwe Amosu and her colleague Chris Stone talk about why police reform in Nigeria –and elsewhere –is so hard to achieve
• Interview with human rights lawyer Kayum Ahmed about radical activist critiques of the human rights framework
• The Coda: A song that commemorates the day that US civil rights activists met an African anti-colonial fighter in 1963

For a list of supplemental readings and additional information about this episode’s content, please visit www.strengthandsolidarity.org/podcast

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