Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Thursday 21 April
11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Sophocles said, ‘To him who is in fear, everything rustles’. How have the politics of fear affected global developments in recent years? Which rustles are real and which are imagined? And who benefits from stoking our anxieties?
In a new Human Rights Watch report, executive director Kenneth Roth identifies fear as a factor in many human rights challenges of our time. Fear of war and torture have driven unprecedented numbers of asylum-seekers from their homes. At the same time, fear has influenced many governments in rich countries to close their borders to those seeking refuge.
Meanwhile, authoritarian governments have become increasingly anxious about the strengthening of civil society with the rise of social media. Civil society, Roth argues, is under more aggressive attack than at any time in recent memory. Fear is behind crackdowns across the world on freedom of speech and expression.
In conversation with Emily Howie, Roth will discuss human rights in an increasingly anxious, interconnected world.
Featuring
Emily Howie
Emily Howie has worked with the Human Rights Law Centre (HRLC) since 2009 protecting human rights in Australian foreign policy, defending democratic freedoms such as the right to vote as well as anti-racism and minority rights issues. She also works on accountability for Australia’s actions overseas such as border protection measures and military cooperation, including Australia’s involvement in the US drone program.
Emily has a masters in law from Columbia University in New York. In 2012 she was awarded Columbia’s Leebron Human Rights Fellowship to conduct research on asylum seekers in Sri Lanka.
Prior to joining the HRLC, Emily worked as a Senior Associate with Allens Arthur Robinson, a legal adviser to the House of Representatives Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee, and in the Trial Chambers of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Emily has substantial human rights litigation experience, including as a lead lawyer in Roach v Cth [2007] HCA 43, which established constitutional protection of the right to vote.
Kenneth Roth
Kenneth Roth is the executive director of Human Rights Watch, one of the world's leading international human rights organisations, which operates in more than 90 countries. Prior to joining Human Rights Watch in 1987, Roth served as a federal prosecutor in New York and for the Iran-Contra investigation in Washington, DC. A graduate of Yale Law School and Brown University, Roth has conducted numerous human rights investigations and missions around the world. He has written extensively on a wide range of human rights abuses, devoting special attention to issues of international justice, counterterrorism, the foreign policies of the major powers, and the work of the United Nations.