Further exploring the Links between Cultural Heritage and Human Rights
The One Ocean Hub joins the University of Strathclyde and the Heritage International Institute in leading discussions about the link between heritage and human rights ahead of Human Rights Day!
On the 5 and 6 of December 2024, Hub researchers presented research findings that underscore the connection between the ocean, heritage and human rights at the fourth edition of the international symposium ‘Heritage in War and Peace’, organised by and hosted at the University of Strathclyde in conjunction with Heritage International Institute. This year, the conference ran under the theme “Human Rights Perspectives through Past, Present and Future”, and it took place in the week preceding the UN Human Rights Day.
The conference highlighted the ‘unique connection between human rights, heritage and the passage of time, which underscored the value of heritage for all of humanity.’The opening plenary summarised contemporary challenges relating to grave injustices, human sufferings and overt breach of human rights, as well as the impacts of these on cultural heritage globally. Pressed between the devastation of war on the one hand and the (somewhat connected) acceleration of climate change, neither human lives, more-than-human nature, nor the heritage are spared. To address this, the symposium called for ‘the innovative management of cultural heritage from the point of view of accessibility and inclusive education for vulnerable groups.’
Hub researchers participated in the conference, making contributions that amply responded to the theme. Prof Stuart Jeffrey, a Hub researcher based at theGlasgow School of Art, gave spoke on Digital Heritage, Community Engagement and Creative Response in the closing plenary session of the conference. In his talk, he underlined the significance of art-based approaches, participatory researchand Indigenous and local knowledge, which have been recurrent themes in Hub findings, and also central to his work which included leading on the Hub’s DEEP Fund .
Hub researchers from the University of Cape Coast, Dr Sulley Ibrahim & Dr Harrison Kwame Golo, presented on Right to Culture in Fishery Governance: Insights from Customary Law Practices of Small-Scale Fishing Communities in Ghana. This presentation contributed to the conference debates about linkages between human rights, heritage and customary rights, using an African lens.Hub Knowledge Exchange Associate, Dr Milica Prokic‘ also presented work that centered on an open air-prison in the former Yugoslavia, as she spoke about the ways in which the environment can be mobilised in intra-human violence, and how that can (or cannot) be interpreted as heritage in her paper ‘The Barren Island and the Jailer Sea: Difficult Past and Accidental Heritage of the Former Political Prison Site on Goli Otok.’
In addition, the Hub acted as an organising partner for this important event alongside Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna; the Center for Air and Space Law, School of Law, University of Mississippi; the Institute of Air and Space Law, Faculty of Law, McGill University; Universities Network for Children in Armed Conflict and For All Moonkind.
The timing of the event, ahead of Human Rights Day, was crucial for driving discussions about key considerations for linking cultural and natural heritage debates to those about Human Rights. The upcoming conference proceedings, planned as a book of working papers, will be published by the Strathclyde University in due course.
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