July 14, 2025ProgramThe Duty to Prevent, Guarantor Institutions and State Capture: Theorizing from the Global South
Watch the full recording of "The Duty to Prevent, Guarantor Institutions and State Capture," examining the critical link between a State's responsibility to prevent human rights violations and constitutional design from a Global South perspective.
On April 24, the Program on Law and Society in the Muslim World and the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School hosted Professor Dinesha Samararatne, independent expert to the Constitutional Council of Sri Lanka and Professor of Public and International Law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Colombo, for a discussion of State’s duties to prevent human rights violation. Professor Samararatne, a renown expert on comparative constitutionalism and human rights, offered insights that draw on experiences from the Global South, including Nepal, South Africa, and Sri Lanka, to explore how constitutional institutions, including Elections Commissions and Human Rights Commissions, can shape the dynamics of a State’s discharge of its duties, and in these experiences create new forces with the potential to give expression to the duty to prevent human rights violations. The discussion was moderated by Manisha Dissanayake ’25, a lawyer with a focus on human rights and constitutional law practicing in the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court of Sri Lanka
A recording of the panel discussion is available here.