In our contemporary rights-dominated climate, the institutionalisation of values is commonly understood as involving the enforcement of people's human rights. This colloquium will bring together defenders and critics of human rights, including academics, lawyers and NGO representatives. Our aim is to examine both the concept and practice of human rights, in order to develop an interdisciplinary, trans-cultural assessment of human rights discourse.

This is the second of four AHRC-funded events that will bring together a network of academic researchers and non-academic practitioners to examine and assess the role human rights play as the dominant contemporary means for institutionalising fundamental values. Future colloquia within the project include human rights beyond the law? (Autumn 2010); subsistence as a human right (Spring 2011).