Human Rights and Transformative Constitutionalism in Latin America: The Impact of the Inter-American System

Date: 

Tuesday, September 18, 2018, 12:00pm

Location: 

CGIS South, S250, 1730 Cambridge Street

Speaker: Flávia Piovesan, Professor of Constitutional Law and Human Rights, Catholic University of São Paulo

Latin America is characterized by high levels of exclusion and violence, in addition to democracies that are still in a consolidation phase. In this context, the Inter-American System can contribute to establishing human rights standards, offsetting national deficits and fostering a new power dynamic among social actors. It can play a transformative role in strengthening human rights, democracy and the rule of law in the region. The presentation will focus on the impact, challenges and contemporary trends of the Inter-American System.

Flávia Piovesan is a professor of Constitutional Law and Human Rights at the Catholic University of São Paulo. She also teaches at the PhD Program of the University of Buenos Aires and at the Academy on Human Rights at the American University Washington College of Law. She holds a Masters and a PhD from Catholic University of São Paulo. She was a visiting fellow of the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School ; a human rights visiting fellow at the University of Oxford; and since 2007 she has been a fellow at the Max-Planck-Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (Germany). She was a member of the UN High Level Task Force on the implementation of the right to development (2009-2012). She was Special Secretary for Human Rights in Brazil and President of the National Commission for the Eradication of Forced Labor (2016-2017). She is member of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (2018-2021).