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What the organisers would like this conference to achieve
Organisers:
- Vivien Clear
- Greta Bird
- Keirryn Davis
- Christopher Macfarlane
- Baden Offord
- Sam Garkawe
- Mark McDonell
- Ros Mills
- Judy Atkinson
1. Vivien Clear
To engage with others in the promotion of human rights for all peoples.
To participate in learning and to gain understanding of the struggles
and common goals of those who work in and advocate for those rights.
To ensure that those voices are heard and pathways for empowerment are
supported and valued.
2. Greta Bird
I want the conference:
to raise consciousness about issues of human rights
to support and sustain people, particularly activists, who are struggling
to improve rights
to work towards practical steps to enhance rights
to provide some sort of permanent record about the conference deliberations
and recommendations, for example in the form of a conference publication.
3. Keirryn Davis
People with health related problems, especially children or those experiencing mental ill health are often the most vulnerable in our local, national and global community. Women and infant health and HIV/AIDS are major global health concerns that require urgent attention. My vision for the Activating Human Rights Conference is to create the opportunity to share knowledge and experience of human rights from an interdisciplinary perspective in order to inform, challenge and create a revived health and human rights activism at an academic and grassroots level.
4. Christopher Macfarlane
I believe the purpose of this conference is to explore and delve into the subject of human rights and human diversity and to activate and inspire thinking and action to ameliorate human life and suffering on this planet. Therefore it is critical that a diversity of voices are present in an interdisciplinary (academic) and an on-the-ground sense (activists and NGOs) to expand and deepen the thinking, experience, impact and value of our human rights work.
5. Baden Offord
I would like to see the conference:
-provide a crucial space for reflecting on the nature and purpose of human
rights
-nourish activists and academics in their quest for a more compassionate
world
-engage in a meaningful dialogue about diverse approaches to moral maps
of living
-genuinely affect the local, national and global consciousness of human
rights thinking and action
-respond to the forces of de-humanisation which are endemic in the world
today, specifically witnessed in the treatment of Indigenous peoples and
refugees
-speak to an apartheid of trans, homo, bi and queer sexualities.
6. Sam Garkawe
The main purpose of this Conference is to bring together activists and academics from a range of disciplines, and other interested people who are concerned with and want to do something about contemporary human rights issues. Such issues include not just those often heard in the media (refugees, Indigenous policy), but also issues that are 'below the surface', such as people trafficking, forced labour, gay/lesbian rights, the rights of oppressed peoples in our region (such as Tibet and West Papua), and the effects of globalisation on the already marginalised.
7. Mark McDonell
Unfortunately, Human Rights are increasingly being seen by 'Western' democracies as an unnecessary obstruction to the legitimate sovereign power of popularly elected governments. Conversely, by governments of many non-Western nations human rights are being dismissed as a symbol of ongoing Western imperialism. It is my hope that the Activating Human Rights Conference shall provide an opportunity to all those working in this field to explore these issues (is it a crisis, or do I just feel that way as an Australian?) and to discuss how each of us is working towards the realisation of a world which embraces the rights of us all.
8. Ros Mills
I would like to see some discussion between activists and academics concerning the assumptions underlying Human Rights discourses. I am referring particularly to understandings of 'the human' and 'rights' which are so much a part of the liberal humanist project: a project which is currently under critique from anti-humanist, post-humanist, and postcolonial theorists. It may be the case that the western nomenclature of Human Rights is itself a problematic which needs attention. Such discussions of the language and meaning of 'human rights' could open up discursive spaces in which the issues of domination, inequality, cruelty and difference, as raised at this conference, could be considered within a plurality of 'humanitarian' (ie caring) and community frameworks which are able to take these critiques into account and map possible alternative trajectories/actions.
9. Judy Atkinson
I would like to see the conference use the concept of Punyu in relationship
to the WHO concept of health in activitating human rights in communities:
" The Ottawa Charter of Health Promotion of 1986, outlines
the fundamental conditions and resources for health: peace, shelter, education,
food, income, a stable eco-system, sustainable resources, and social justice,
which requires equity in housing, education, income, social power etc.
It resonates strongly with punyu. The word punyu, from
the language of the Ngaringman from the Northern Territory, explains that
concepts and functions of health or well-being must be approached from
an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approach. Punyu encompasses:
person and country and is associated with being: strong, happy, knowledgeable,
socially responsible (to 'take a care'), beautiful, clean, safe - both
in the sense of being within the law/lore and in the sense of being cared
for. Being well would therefore be an 'achieved quality, developed
through relationships of mutual care'.We do not have peace in our communities
and all other prerequisites, listed here for health and wellbeing, are
also left wanting."
Human Rights must start here where I live and work, in my backyard. What
are we doing here where we live, love, play and work.
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