Thursday 12 October
3pm – 5pm (AEDT)
UNSW Council Chambers, Kensington

The workshop will examine the topics of accountability, impunity, and the protection of human rights by focusing not only on how governments are held to account by various sectors, but also on how these actors – business, traditional and new media, emerging technologies, civil society and rights holders – approach the challenges of accountability and the implications of impunity.

It will commence with brief opening comments from four speakers considering accountability and its implications in relation to business, development, gender, climate change and international justice.

The remainder of the workshop will be conducted in breakout groups where participants will be provided with prompts to respond to and exchange ideas. The workshop will conclude with a plenary session to discuss interventions and conclusions from the breakout groups.

The workshop is open to all conference participants – please ensure you are registered on the conference website. No abstract needs to be submitted to participate in the workshop. 

In collaboration with this session, the Australian Journal of Human Rights will publish a Special Issue in mid-2024 that examines whether and why accountability for human rights violations is in crisis. Information on that call for papers is here.

Abstracts are due after the conference workshop on 19 October 2023.

Speakers

Rawan Arraf

Rawan

Rawan Arraf is the Executive Director and Principal Lawyer at the Australian Centre for International Justice. Rawan has ten years of legal experience in refugee protection, administrative law and international human rights law. Rawan most recently worked as a refugee lawyer at community legal centre, Refugee Advice & Casework Service providing a wide range of protection advice to people seeking asylum in Australia. She is actively engaged with lawyers and organisations working in universal jurisdiction litigation abroad and in 2018 trained with the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), Berlin, working closely with the International Crimes and Accountability team on universal jurisdiction matters.

Rawan is an arts and law graduate of the University of Sydney and has completed specialist human rights and international law courses at the European University Institute in Florence. Rawan is completing a Master of Laws from the University of New South Wales. She is a fellow of the Centre for Australian Progress.

Jolyon Ford

JF

Jolyon Ford is a Professor at the Australian National University (ANU). A graduate of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Cambridge, and the ANU, he has more than 20 years’ experience in more than 30 countries, working on legal, human rights and governance issues in national government, an inter-governmental organisation, civil society, leading think-tanks and the private sector.

He is the author of Regulating Business for Peace (Cambridge, 2015) and co-editing author of Regulatory Insights on Artificial Intelligence (Elgar, 2022). He co-leads the ARC Discovery project ‘Reconceiving Engagement with International Law and Institutions in an Era of Populism (2022-2027) and his book Populism and Human Rights (Routledge) is currently in press. He was a 2022 Fulbright Scholar (University of California, Berkeley).

Allison Henry

Allison

Allison Henry is a Research Fellow and Associate with the Australian Human Rights Institute. She has been the managing editor of the Australian Journal of Human Rights since August 2020. Allison completed her PhD on 'Regulatory responses to sexual assault and sexual harassment in Australian university settings’ with the Institute in 2023. This followed her role as the Campaign Director of The Hunting Ground Australia Project from 2015 to 2018, a collaborative impact campaign that was instrumental in raising awareness of sexual violence on Australian university campuses.

Allison was the project researcher on 'Understanding University Responses to HDR Candidate-Supervisor Relationship Challenges', and will lead a research team on Phase 2 of the project later in 2023. Allison has Masters degrees in International Studies (Syd) and International Law (ANU), both focusing on human rights. Her previous roles include five years as a Ministerial advisor in the federal parliament and three years as National Director of the Australian Republican Movement. 

Loro Horta

Loro

Loro Horta is a diplomat and scholar from Timor-Leste. He has served as Timor-Leste's ambassador to Cuba and counsellor at the Timor-Leste embassy in Beijing.

He has been writing on China for over 15 years. He is a graduate of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) at the Nanyang Technological University of Singapore, the Chinese National Defense University, the US Naval Post Graduate School, the American National Defense University, and Sydney University.

Ben Newell

Ben newell

Professor Ben Newell is the Director of the new interdisciplinary UNSW Institute for Climate Risk and Response. Ben's research focuses on the cognitive processes underlying judgment, choice and decision making, and the application of this knowledge to environmental, medical, financial and forensic contexts. He is the lead author of Straight Choices: The Psychology of Decision Making.

Ben is on the Editorial Boards of Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, Thinking & Reasoning, Decision, Journal of Behavioral Decision Making and Experimental Psychology. Ben is also a Consulting Editor for Judgment & Decision Making. Ben is a member of the inaugural Academic Advisory Panel of the Behavioural Economics Team of the Australian Government.