Human Rights Are Not Optional
FLIA’s strength in human rights-related projects lies in our leading experts on the topic and our global research team, which especially includes a wide range of young professionals with creative research methods and comparative views. The human rights projects at FLIA cover academic research, courses, educational programs, and various online and offline events.
Human Rights
Based on shared values like dignity, fairness, equality, respect and independence, human rights are rights inherent to all human beings, regardless of race, sex, nationality, ethnicity, language, religion, or any other status.
Transitional Justice
By putting victims and their dignity first, transitional justice signals the way forward for a renewed commitment to make sure ordinary citizens are safe in their own countries – safe from the abuses of their own authorities and effectively protected from violations by others.
Conflict and Peace
Conflict and peace studies entails understanding the concept of peace which is defined as political condition that ensures justice and social stability through formal and informal institutions, practices, and norms.
Women's Human Rights
For many years women’s rights movements have fought hard to address this inequality, campaigning to change laws or taking to the streets to demand their rights are respected. And new movements have flourished in the digital age, such as the #MeToo campaign which highlights the prevalence of gender-based violence and sexual harassment.
Business and Human Rights
The actions of business enterprises can affect people's enjoyment of their human rights either positively or negatively. Indeed, experience shows that enterprises can and do infringe human rights where they are not paying sufficient attention to this risk.
Human Rights and Global Civics
Global civics proposes to understand civics in a global sense as a social contract among all world citizens in an age of interdependence and interaction. The disseminators of the concept define it as the notion that we have certain rights and responsibilities towards each other by the mere fact of being human on Earth.
Featured Human Rights Projects
In the last decade, several reports and accounts claiming the plight of the Uyghur community in the Xinjiang province of China have been brought to light resulting in the numerous albeit piecemeal efforts of the international human rights community. The World Uyghur Congress together with international civil society has been instrumental in rallying British citizens for instituting the“UK Tribunal To Investigate China’s Alleged Genocide And Crimes Against Humanity Against Uyghur, Kazakh And Other Turkic Muslim Populations.” While denying all allegations the Chinese authorities have termed these efforts as fake news and propaganda. FLIA Scholars made the efforts to discover the insights and views of scholars towards this Peoples Tribunal – its legitimacy, role and functions and operations and analyzes the information discovered. It does this through publicly available literature to spotlight the current scholarly discourse on the subject.
Human Rights Projects Director
Salma Yusuf is a Sri Lankan Lawyer and a Global Consultant & Trainer in Human Rights, Peace-building, Transitional Justice and Reconciliation.
She brings in multi-stakehoder expertise having served in diverse roles and sectors ranging from being a Civil Society activist nationally and internationally, an NGO Professional, Consultant to Multilateral and Bilateral organizations, a University Lecturer and Researcher, a Journalist and Opinion Columnist, and most recently a Public Official of the Government of Sri Lanka where she led the process of drafting and developing of Sri Lanka’s first National Policy on Reconciliation which is the first in Asia.
She has published extensively in scholarly journals including at the Seattle Journal of Social Justice, Sri Lanka Journal of International Law, Frontiers of Legal Research, American Journal of Social Welfare and Human Rights, Journal of Human Rights in the Commonwealth, International Affairs Review, Harvard Asia Quarterly and The Diplomat.
She is a Research Scholar at the Foundation for Law and International Affairs and a sitting Member of the Commonwealth Women Mediators Network. She is Advisory Board Member of World Beyond War.
She has a Master of Laws in Public International Law from Queen Mary University of London and a Bachelor of Laws Honours from University of London. She was called to the Bar and has been admitted as an Attorney-at-Law of the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka.
She has completed specialized fellowships at University of Toronto, University of Canberra, and American University of Washington.
Recent Human Rights Projects at FLIA
Academic Report
- The Legality of State Department Report on China and Uyghur Tribunal
- Strategies for Embedding Remedial Mechanisms Downstream in Global Supply Chains -- Submission to the 2017 UN Forum on Business and Human Rights
- Joint Submission by FLIA and the Coalition for Peace and Ethics on the Themes for the First Session of the Forum on Human Rights, Democracy, and the Rule of Law
Upcoming Courses
- Conflict and Peace
- Transnational Justice
- Women's Human Rights
- Human Rights and Negotiation
Previous Events
- Side event for the First Session of the UN Forum on Human Rights, Democracy, and the Rule of Law, Geneva, November 2016
- International Conference: Socio-Economic Rights and Global Orders – China’s Challenges, Opportunities and Contributions, Beijing, October 2015
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