Event

Event Overview

This is a hybrid event. Please register here to attend virtually on Zoom.

The UN human rights system remains a central pillar of the international legal order, yet it is navigating a period of unprecedented institutional, political, and financial pressure. From mounting geopolitical tensions to direct challenges to its legitimacy, the architecture of global accountability is being tested like never before. Are we witnessing a gradual erosion of this vital system, or a necessary phase of adaptation and renewal?

To explore this fundamental question, this panel brings together UN Independent Experts Benyam Dawit Mezmur, Victor Madrigal-Borloz, and Viviana Krsticevic for a candid discussion. Join us as we examine the current pressures confronting these mechanisms and explore pathways to strengthen international oversight in an era of complex global crises.

Open to Harvard ID holders only. Lunch will be provided for in-person attendees.

About the speakers:

Viviana Krsticevic is a member of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran. She is also the Executive Director of the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL) and regularly teaches at the American University Washington College of Law. She has appeared before the Inter-American Commission and Court of Human Rights, arguing pioneering cases on the legal framework for accountability, gender-based violence, civic space, victims’ rights, indigenous peoples, reparations, and social and economic rights.

Benyam Dawit Mezmur is a Professor of Law at the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town, South Africa and is Head of the Children’s Rights Project at the Dullah Omar Institute. He has served on the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child since 2012, and was its Chairperson from 2015-2017. He also served on the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, a treaty body of the African Union, from 2010-2021, and served as its Chairperson twice from 2012-2014 and 2015-2017.

Victor Madrigal-Borloz is a moderator and member of the Board of Trustees of the United Nations Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture and a Distinguished Visiting Researcher at the Williams Institute of the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) . From 2013 to 2016 he was a member of the UN Subcommittee on the Prevention of Torture, and from 2018 to 2023 he held the mandate of UN Independent Expert on Protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Gerald Neuman (moderator) is the Director of Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Program, and the J. Sinclair Armstrong Professor of International, Foreign, and Comparative Law at HLS. Neuman teaches courses in international human rights law, immigration and nationality law, and U.S. constitutional law. From 2011 to 2014, he served as a Member of the UN Human Rights Committee. Neuman holds a JD from HLS and a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.