Report of International Conference Exceptionalism and Human Rights

See also the programm of the conference

The International Conference on Exceptionalism and Human Rightstook place in the Faculty of Law of the University of Barcelona, on December 14 and 15.

The event was organized by the Observatori del Sistema Penal i els Drets Humans(OSPDH) of the University of Barcelona with the collaboration of the Spanish Committee for the Prevention of Torture in Spain. The conference took place in the framework of the CHALLENGE Research project(funded by the Sixth Framework Research Programme -Theme 6.1.1 of Priority 7, «Citizens and Governance in a Knowledge based society»- of the Directorate-General for Research of the European Commission) and relied with the support of the International Project: Juvenile Delinquency at El Salvador: social and economical policies(funded by the Agència Catalana de Cooperació al Desenvolupament of the Catalan Government).

The main objective of the Conference was to analyze, inform and discuss with the scientific community, students and society, some specific subjects related with the current problems caused by the relationship between liberty and security, specially the links between exceptionalism and globalization, migration, antiterrorism, deprivation of liberty, torture, etc…

We counted with the participation of people from different European countries and people from other parts of Spain that work on very different kind of organizations: universities, NGOs, activists for the Human Rights, etc.

The first day (14 December), we counted with the intervention of scholars who participate in the CHALLENGE project. The session was divided in three panels about: exceptionalism and globalization, migrations and terrorism. In these panels were presented papers from Workpackages 2, 5, 6, 8 and 9, jointly with the communication of lawyers, members of NGO’s and local scholars with expertise about these topics.

After the of discussion, some researchers of the University of Barcelona presented two research projects carried out by the Observatori del Sistema Penal i els Drets Humans de la Universitat de Barcelonaduring this last year.

On the second day (15 December), the session was focused on the consequences of exceptional laws and exceptional practices in a concrete area: the deprivation of freedom. We counted with the intervention of some members of the Spanish Committee for the Prevention of Torture in Spain and with the highlighted participation of Eric Sottas from the World Organization against Torture-OMCTand Victoria Kuhn, from the Association for the Prevention of Torture-APT. All this gave to the meeting the possibility of contrasting different points of view, from the theory to the practical perspective.

This is why the idea of the activity was to give importance to the contributions of the Challenge members that attended the Conference on the first day, and, on the second day, to analyse subjects specially related with the national and local situation.

We would like to emphasize the importance of promoting this kind of activities among the students of the university, because they really appreciate the possibility of having access to knew perspectives and researches, such as the contributions submitted by the members of the Challenge project. We counted with an attendance of 300 people.In the audience there were students, members of the scientific community of the University of Barcelona, professionals, NGO members and civil servants of Catalan Government.

Contributions will be available at: http://www.ub.es/ospdh

See also the programm of the conference

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Report of International Conference Exceptionalism and Human Rights