Five years ago the UN Secretary General, while delivering the Nelson Madela lecture in New York, he prophetically asserted that “Looking to the future two seismic shifts will shape the 21 st century; the climate crisis and digital transformation. The phenomenon of digitalization has triggered a massive debate among social scientists, policy makers and moral philosophers regarding its power, limits and the future of humanity.
There are some areas where the impact of digitalization attracts particular attention, due to the sweeping challenges it poses to the fabric of public authority and its transformative effect on democratic institutions and human rights protection
Within this context, AHCD's second research seminar will examine the right to live in dignity, interpreted so by the HRC in General Comment 36 ( right to life), as a case study that can accommodate a multi-layered analysis of the potential expansive effect of digitalization on human rights protection. In this regard the right to live in dignity bridges first the hard core of the ICCPR with the social protection/security domain and second this interpretation of the right to life invites an imaginative structure beyond the real world to the offline one. Additionally the right to live in dignity operates as the core of a web that connects several rights (such as the right to privacy and equality) and permeates current debates on climate litigation or autonomy, testing the width and limits of elasticity in interpretation.
The particular questions to be asked are; Can it become a mega right itself? And if so what are the risks and limitations?
Dr. Maria Varaki is a lecturer in international law at the War Studies department, King's College London. Before moving to London she held research positions with the Erik Castren Institute of International Law and Human Rights in Helsinki and the Law Faculty of Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She was also an Assistant Professor in International Law at Kadir Has University in Istanbul. Currently she is a Research Associate in 3 Generations of Digital Human Rights, ERC project, 2023-2028, Hebrew University, Faculty of Law.