Annual Human Rights Conference 2025
Human Rights under Pressure
5 March 2025
After a brief hiatus, the HRLC Human Rights Conference returned in 2025 on the topic of 'Human Rights Under Pressure'.
Human rights are under pressure. Threats ranging from anti-democratic movements to the climate crisis, to rollbacks to hard-won protections for historically disadvantaged groups, to assaults on freedom of expression and the right to protest, risk robbing human rights and their associated enforcement mechanisms of their moral, political and legal power. In response, this conference brought together leading experts to consider the state of play of human rights and the prospects for pushback globally, regionally and nationally.
The conference opened with a keynote address by Professor Conor Gearty, which was followed by a panel on Human Rights under Pressure, and closed with a keynote address by Baroness Shami Chakrabarti.
Keynote Address - Subverting Human Rights: The Role of Anti-terrorism Law
The event began with a keynote address by Professor Conor Gearty on ‘Subverting Human Rights: The Role of Anti-terrorism Law’.
Professor Gearty is Professor of Human Rights Law at the London School of Economics (LSE) where he has been Director of its Centre for the Study of Human Rights and LSE’s Institute of Public Affairs. He is also a barrister and was a founder member of Matrix chambers from where he continues to practise. He has published widely on terrorism, civil liberties and human rights and has appeared in human rights cases in the House of Lords, the Court of Appeal and the High Court.
He is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Bencher of Middle Temple and of the King’s Inn, and has Honorary Degrees from Brunel and Roehampton universities, University College Dublin in Ireland and Sacred Heart University in the United States. In 2021 he was appointed an honorary KC in recognition of his work in his various fields.
In late June 2016, Conor published a book on human rights law, On Fantasy Island, Britain, Europe and Human Rights (Oxford University Press). An analysis of the role of judges in the use of torture by the UK state was published in the Modern Law Review in early 2021. His most recent book, Homeland Insecurity. The Rise and Rise of Global Anti-terrorism Law was published by Polity in May 2024.
Panel on Human Rights Under Pressure
This panel was chaired by Dr Scarlett McArdle, Assistant Professor in Law, University of Nottingham. Speakers included:
- Tessa Khan - Founder and Executive Director of Climate Uplift;
- Professor Aoife Nolan - Professor of International Human Rights Law / Director of the Human Rights Law Centre, University of Nottingham;
- Dr Mando Rachovitsa - Associate Professor in Human Rights Law / Deputy Director of the Human Rights Law Centre, University of Nottingham;
- Dr Wanda Wyporska - Chief Executive Officer of Safe Passage International.
Keynote Adress - Human Rights and the Case for the Defence
The event closed with a keynote address by Baroness Shami Chakrabarti on ‘Human Rights and the Case for the Defence’.
The Rt Hon Shami Chakrabarti CBE PC is a barrister, human rights campaigner and Labour Peer who has written and broadcast widely over recent decades.
She was Shadow Attorney General for England and Wales from 2016 to 2020 and Director of Liberty (The National Council for Civil Liberties) from 2003 to 2016. Prior to that she was Liberty’s In-House Counsel and a Home Office lawyer.
Called to the Bar in 1994, she is a Bencher of Middle Temple and the Chair of London’s Gate Theatre. She is a Visiting Professor of Practise at the LSE. She has been Chancellor of Oxford Brookes and Essex Universities and a Visiting Fellow at various others. In 2012 she carried the Olympic Flag at the London Games and served as a panelist on the Leveson Inquiry into the ethics and practice of the media.
She is the author of three Penguin (Allen Lane) books: ON LIBERTY (2014), OF WOMEN (2017) and HUMAN RIGHTS - The Case for the Defence (2024).