Human Rights in the Balance: Safeguarding Social and Environmental Sustainability

About the Conference

On the occasion of its 4th conference, the Connecticut/Baden-Württemberg Human Rights Research Consortium (HRRC) invites its members to gather in person for a two-day conference aimed at grappling with the topic “Human Rights in the Balance: Safeguarding Social and Environmental Sustainability”.

Safeguarding human rights is a perennial challenge, rendered more difficult by growing social polarization, widening inequality, new technological developments, and a deepening environmental crisis. Human rights can inform our understanding of these issues, and should shape our path toward action to address them. This idea of a human-rights based approach is central also to the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) launched in 2015 and to be achieved by 2030, which are a “universal call to action” to improve the lives and prospects of everyone, everywhere.

Acknowledging that human rights are essential to achieving sustainable development, the conference aims to address the following themes:

• The multiple dimensions of sustainable development and human rights: social, economic, and environmental
• “Leaving no one behind” and how human rights function in an unequal world
• The concepts of individual and collective human rights, and their role in paving the way for a sustainable future
• Emerging technologies as a source for good (or bad) in the fulfillment of human rights 
• Pathways to the participation of all nations, all peoples and all segments of society in decision-making towards sustainable development

Conference Programme

The conference program is now available. Only registered participants may take part in the sessions.

Tuesday, 17 June 2025:

• Session 1: Transcending Extremism: Toward an ethic of solidarity
• Session 2: On the nature of being
• Session 3: Higher Education in the Balance: Understanding Challenges and Possibilities for Fostering Democratic, Just, Peaceful, & Sustainable Futures
• Session 4: Pedagogy and Empowerment
• Session 5: Beyond business as usual

Wednesday, 18 June 2025:

• Session 6: Tech and Human Rights: Social and Environmental Implications
• Session 7: Empowering Communities through the Emancipatory Potential of Artificial Intelligence
• Session 8: Paradigm shifts
• Session 9: Disclosing the coloniality of Human Rights’ alignment with modernity: how identifying eco-centric worldviews, earth jurisprudence, and platform labor can contribute to forming a just sustainable society

Hosts

HRRC Co-Directors

• Ralf von den Hoff (FRIAS, University of Freiburg)
• Silja Voeneky (University of Freiburg)
• Sebastian Wogenstein (University of Connecticut)
• Shareen Hertel (University of Connecticut)