A Conversation between Sumi Madhok and Başak Çalı
Wednesday, 19 November | 16h30
KVAB, Brussels
As part of the closing conference of the research project ‘Futureproofing Human Rights’, the Universities of Ghent, Antwerp, Brussels and Hasselt are jointly organizing a public lecture on new ways of thinking about human rights accountability, moderated by Prof. Wouter Vandenhole. During the event, Sumi Madhok (LSE) and Başak Çalı (University of Oxford) explore what it means to develop richer, more substantive frameworks for human rights accountability that transcend the boundaries between law, politics, and moral claims.
Professor Madhok’s work on rights vernacular rights cultures reveals how rights-based mobilisations are not simply engaged in translating or localising ‘global human rights,’ but rather have their own languages of rights and entitlements grounded in specific political imaginaries, justificatory premises and subjectivities. Her research shows how vernacular rights politics operates as a politics of structural justice Meanwhile, Professor Çalı challenges the human rights accountability as a simplistic division of human rights as normative foundation and legal accountability as practical enforcement, which obscures the ways law itself shapes and frames what we think human rights accountability is.
Together they discuss what thicker notions of human rights accountability might look like, sensitive to the complex terrain where legal obligations, political struggles, and moral imperatives intersect. Moving beyond technocratic framings, blueprints, and descriptive typologies, Madhok and Çalı promise a conversation that challenges us to rethink who holds authority, whose voices count, and what thicker notions of accountability demand when law, politics, and moral claims refuse to stay in their separate boxes.
The event is open to everyone. The in person event in Brussels is followed by a reception. Registration is required for attendance.