Declarations: The Human Rights Podcast

In this episode, we explore the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) — often hailed as the “conscience of Europe” and one of the most successful human rights institutions in the world. But in an era of democratic backsliding, populist politics, and eroding faith in institutions, what does “justice” look like today?

Drawing on eight years of fieldwork with advocates, lawyers, and judges at the ECHR, Pro...

What does it mean to imagine another humanity in a century marked by war, displacement, and deep inequality?

In this episode, we sit down with Benjamin P. Davis, author of Another Humanity: Decolonial Ethics from Du Bois to Arendt.

Davis traces shifting ideas of “the human” through the works of W. E. B. Du Bois, Édouard Glissant, Sylvia Wynter, and Edward Said—thinkers who redefined human rights and humanism in th...

Welcome back to Declarations!

In this episode, we’re joined by renowned journalist Kalpana Jain to explore how the media landscape has evolved and how press freedom is shifting across the globe. From the West to South Asia, we unpack the complex forces shaping what gets reported, whose voices are amplified, and how journalism is being redefined today. 

The media has undergone a seismic shift over the past two decades, tech...

Welcome back to the second episode of Season 9 of Declarations!

We are often informed to the terrorising, oppressive and distressing effects of Human Rights abuses across the continent of Africa.

However, what happens in the rare cases that citizens don't know they're being abused? By exploring the implicitly powerful weapon of censorship, misinformation and mass propaganda, we can observe how patriotic, anti-western narratives succ...

Welcome back to Season 9 of Declarations!

This season we are looking at the notion of Human Rights and The Polycrisis.

In our first episode, Co-host Ed Parker sits down with Andrew Preston, an acclaimed historianof American foreign relations post 1890, to trace the role of human rights in American protest movements and foreign policy debates, asking whether humanitarian ideals have ever truly guided U.S. decision-making.

From campus ...

In episode 9 Declarations host Neema Jayasinghe is joined by panellist Aimee Hobley and guest speaker Kristin Hughes. Their discussion explores the potential human rights challenges raised by the ongoing green transition. Kristin offers insight and expertise on how the multistakeholder green transition can mitigate against the potential threats created by rare earth mining and resource insecurity, and how upscaling a circular econo...

In this episode of Declarations, Neema Jayasinghe and panellist Isabella Todini sit down with Dr. Lorena Gazzotti, a research fellow at the University of Cambridge and Vice President of the Cambridge branch of the University and Colleges Union (UCU) to discuss the right to strike, why lectures across the UK have been striking this year, and why urgent action is needed. We focus on lecture strikes and the marking boycott taking plac...

In our seventh episode, host Neema Jayasinghe joins panellist Yasmin Homer to discuss the work of women peacebuilders with guests Eva Tabbasam (GAPS UK) and Andrea Filippi (PeaceWomen Across the Globe). We discuss the importance of fostering and protecting civil society networks in peacetime and wartime, the challenges of political will, and how the Women, Peace, Security Agenda needs to expand its feminist focus through a more inc...

In our sixth episode, host Neema Jayasinghe is joined by previous podcast host and panellist, Dr Maryam Tanwir. With special guest, Professor Sam Vaknin, the episode unpacks discourses related to the psychology of personal border violations in mental abuse. The conversation questions how borders and boundaries are not only demarcated, violated, or transgressed in global politics, but also at the level of the personal. Here, physica...

In this episode, panellist Clare Francis discusses the interplay of poetry and protest in the Iranian state with Dr. Fatemeh Shams, an activist, award-winning poet, and Persian literary scholar. They explore the boundaries of art and activism in Iran, where successive regimes have historically sought to enforce strict limitations around acceptable versus unacceptable forms of activism. Protest movements challenge these bo...

In this episode, host Neema Jayasinghe is joined by panelist Vanessa Dib to discuss developments of lawfare, the power of law being used as a weapon of conflict, with guest Mr. Jason McCue. In this day and age, wars can take place within and outside the traditional confines of borders and boundaries as wars are increasingly started, fought, and ended through lawfare. To better situate the discussion, Mr. Ja...