After years of austerity-driven regressive policies, and under this terrible virus, doesn’t it look like the time of the retrenchment of the State may be over? How do we manage expectations about what human rights can possibly deliver, while imagining a new role for them for a post-neoliberal world? As a matter of urgency, when responding to a serious public health emergency like the current pandemic, it is necessary to define positive obligations to protect and fulfil socio-economic rights, including responsibilities of private actors. Medium and long term, there are certain policy areas where enhancing social rights could make a real difference in the UK, including housing (Section 21 evictions), health (difficulties in accessing healthcare for undocumented migrants), work (ban on access to employment for people seeking asylum) and social security (regressive ‘welfare reforms’).
Dr Koldo Casla’s talk will touch on some arguments advanced in two papers published earlier in the year: a chapter in a Fabian Society report on public services and welfare state (from March), and a chapter in an online collective volume edited by Essex University on legal and human rights implications of Covid-19 (July).
Dr Koldo Casla is a lecturer at the School of Law and a member of the Human Rights Centre of the University of Essex, UK. He holds an LLB from the University of the Basque Country (Spain), a MA in Human Rights from the University of Essex, a Fulbright MA in International Studies from the University of Denver (USA) and a PhD in European and International Studies from King’s College London. Koldo is the author of “Politics of International Human Rights Law Promotion in Western Europe: Order versus Justice” (Routledge, 2019). Among other responsibilities, he coordinated the UK human rights NGO Just Fair between 2016 and 2019, and he has worked as an independent researcher on socio-economic rights for Amnesty International Spain. Between 2011 and 2013, Koldo was the chief of staff of the Human Rights Commissioner of the Parliament of the Basque Country (“Ararteko”).
Find out more about Koldo here
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