News

This Special Issue will focus on new and emerging ways in which human rights curricula engage with practice, and specifically how such curricula incorporate activist knowledge, as one means of pluralising the forms of knowledge taught within universities and supporting activism and civil society.

Expressions of interest are invited in the form of a short 500-word abstract (by 10 May 2024, if possible).

The Africa Human Rights Hub is a university-based initiative seeking to support human rights defenders and expand the democratic space within the African content. The vision of the Hub is to support African universities to play a significant role in protecting emancipatory human rights, focusing on how universities can support ‘protection’, both externally and internally. Read more in their first report.

As part of CAHR’s UNESCO Chair activities, we are looking to develop guidelines to support universities offering temporary relocation to human rights defenders / activists at risk.

If you have been involved in hosting HRDs / activists, either on formal schemes or as students, or are planning to do so, and would like to be involved in this project, please click the link below for more information.

At the Global Refugee Forum held in December 2023 the UNHCR reiterated the 15by30 pledge - to have 15% of young refugees enrolled in higher education by 2030. The UNHCR urged states and the private sector ‘to come forward with pledges to increase funding for and access to higher education by joining and making contributions to the 15by30 global pledge on refugee higher education’.

In this presentation (recorded on 3 November 2023) Dr Rosario Figari Layús examines the cases of Brazil and Colombia and analyses university reactions when staff and students are being attacked or in a situation of risk. What measures are adopted by universities in these countries to deal with security challenges faced by scholars at risk and to guarantee academic freedom? How effective and sustainable are these measures? What are the consequences and impacts of such institutional actions in these cases?

The Politics and Urban Governance Research Group (PUG), at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), has launched an African Hub to support universities as sites of protection for human rights defenders and the expansion of political space on the continent. Developed in collaboration with the UNESCO Chair on these themes, held by Paul Gready, human rights defenders, academics and students, the Hub will support universities to counter threats to the freedom and autonomy of academics, students and activists.

This document sets out the Action Plan for the first two years of the UNESCO Chair addressing the role of universities in the ‘Protection of HRDs, and Expansion of Political Space’.

The latest UNESCO Chair Policy Brief - Universities as Sites of Activism and Protection - is now available.

All the UNESCO Chair working papers and policy briefs can be found here.

The UNESCO Chair and colleagues have a chapter published in ‘Emancipatory Human Rights and the University’ - Universities as Sites of Protection: Insights from the Global South on Gender-Based Violence

Scholars at Risk (SAR) announces the release of Free To Think 2023, a report analysing 409 attacks on the higher education community in 66 countries and territories, between 1 July 2022, and 30 June 2023.