Cultural Rights and Human Rights: Questioning Protection

Speaker: Elsa Stamatopoulou, Former Chief of the Secretariat of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues; Director, Indigenous Peoples' Rights Program, Institute for the Study of Human Rights, Columbia University.

Elsa Stamatopoulou's pioneering book Cultural Rights in International Law explores international protections of cultural rights. In her former role as the Chief of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and current one as the Director of the Institute for the Study of Human Rights' Indigenous Peoples' Rights Program, she is an advocate of the protection of cultural rights and of putting concerned communities in the driving seat on this issue. In this talk, she will discuss historical shifts and current developments in the protection of cultural rights internationally, while reflecting on the scope and contemporary reasons behind the existence, or lack thereof, of international protections of cultural rights.

This event is co-sponsored by Columbia Law School's Human Rights Institute and the Institute for the Study of Human Rights.

All are welcome and lunch will be provided.