Research launch The Human Rights Council from below A Case Study of the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants Friday 13 June 2014 Law and Development Research Group, Law Faculty, University of Antwerp IAP P7/27 “The Global Challenge of Human Rights Integration: Towards a Users’ Perspective” Programme 10h30 – 10h40: Welcome and contextualisation of the research Prof. Koen De Feyter, Law and Development Research Group, University of Antwerp 10h40 – 11h10: The Human Rights Council from Below. A Case Study of the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants Arne Vandenbogaerde, Law and Development Research Group, University of Antwerp 11h10 – 11h30: Reflections from a sociological perspective Dr. Priscilla Claeys, Post-doctoral Researcher (Fernand Braudel – IFER Fellowship); Collège d'études mondiales (CEM), Paris/University of Louvain (UCL) 11h30 – 11h50: Reflections from the perspective of a European self-advocacy organisation Ms. Nena Georgantzi, AGE Platform Europe 11h50 – 12h20: Debate 12h20 – 12h30: Concluding reflections Prof. Wouter Vandenhole, Law and Development Research Group, University of Antwerp 1 Summary The ‘localising human rights’ research concentrates on how urban and rural poor communities in the Global South have used human rights in order to protect themselves from perceived threats to their human dignity. Such use or ‘local infusion’ into human rights can occur in two ways, by giving or interpreting locally relevant content into existing human rights treaty norms or by developing the law in a way that will improve its local effectiveness. In this report on the ‘Human Rights Council (HRC) from below’ we analyse the latter option and seek to ascertain whether or not local human rights issues and struggles can be incorporated into the work and normative output of the HRC. As a casestudy the research studied the trajectory of the network of organizations (users) that have lobbied for a Declaration on the Rights of Peasants up to the level of the HRC. The study contains some important lessons for the process of localising human rights. It concludes that the Human Rights Council’s Advisory Committee and the special procedures particularly stand out as the two most relevant institutionalized HRC mechanisms for localising human rights. However, they only provide the opportunity to ‘localise’. The effectiveness and the expertise of the network of local and international organisations, paired with many circumstantial factors, were of utmost important in the success of the peasants’ rights campaign. Our case-study cannot be considered successful yet, as a Declaration on the Rights of Peasants which reflects the local needs is still to be adopted. Follow-up research is needed on this norm-setting process as well as on other cases if we want to further expose the idiosyncrasies of localising processes. This research is embedded in the localising human rights research line of the Law and Development Research Group, as well as in work package 2 of the IAP “The Global Challenge of Human Rights Integration: Towards a Users’ Perspective”. This work package focuses on how ‘users’ navigate through the complex architecture of human rights law and use it to their benefit. Practical information Location: Room E.207, City Campus, University of Antwerp, Grote Kauwenberg 2, 2000 Antwerp Registration: Participation is free, but registration is required before 4 June 2014 through the online registration form. Participants attending will receive an electronic version of the report afterwards. Contact: Ellen Desmet, Project manager IAP ‘Human Rights Integration’ Faculty of Law, University of Antwerp, Venusstraat 23, 2000 Antwerp Tel. +32 3 265 53 48 [email protected] 2 Short CVs Arne Vandenbogaerde is a doctoral candidate at the Law and Development research group at the Faculty of Law. He holds a MA degree in international relations (University of Ghent) and obtained an LLM in International Human Rights Law from the Irish Centre for Human Rights (Galway, Ireland). Previous to hi²s current research at the University of Antwerp he worked with several NGOs and intergovernmental organisations such as the FAO Right to Food Unit. Until recently, Arne was the programme coordinator of the Research Networking Programme Beyond Territoriality: Globalisation and Transnational Human Rights Obligations (GLOTHRO). Priscilla Claeys is a Post-Doctoral Researcher in Sociology, with specialization in the fields of sociology of human rights, sociology of social movements and rural sociology. Her research interests include food sovereignty, right to food, transnational peasant movements, trade and globalization in food and agriculture, human rights and alternative economies. She completed her PhD at the University of Louvain and worked from 2008-2014 as an Advisor to the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food. She previously worked for a number of human rights, labour rights and development organizations, in France, Canada, Mexico and Belgium. Priscilla Claeys has published articles in international journals such as Sociology and Globalizations and is the author of two books on the food system, the food sovereignty movement and human rights. - Claeys, Priscilla (2012). The Creation of New Rights by the Food Sovereignty Movement: The Challenge of Institutionalizing Subversion. Sociology, 46, 844-860. - Lambek, Nadia, & Claeys, Priscilla (Eds.) (2014). Rethinking Food Systems. Structural Challenges, New Strategies, and the Law. Springer. - Claeys, Priscilla. (in press). Human Rights and the Food Sovereignty Movement. Reclaiming Control. Earthscan Routledge. Ms. Nena Georgantzi is a lawyer specialized in human rights and social protection. She is Legal Officer for AGE Platform Europe, a European network of organisations that represents over 30 million older people in the continent. Ms. Georgantzi manages AGE work on human rights and nondiscrimination and represents AGE in EU and UN working groups on the rights of older persons, the Steering Group of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Older People and the Fundamental Rights Platform. She was also involved in the Council of Europe drafting group which finalised in 2013 a recommendation on older people's rights. 3