About The Workshop
SW 102- New perspectives on Human Rights in the face of new social realities
Convenors: Laura Miraut Martín; Antonio Tirso Ester Sánchez; Alina Elena Ramaru
Contact: laura.miraut@ulpgc.es
Human rights constitute one of the most significant legal, political and moral languages of modernity. However, the profound social, cultural and technological transformations of the present age are generating new scenarios of vulnerability that require a reconsideration of their foundations, scope and mechanisms of protection. This Special Workshop proposes a critical and interdisciplinary reflection on new perspectives on human rights in the face of emerging social realities that directly affect human dignity, equality, freedom, integrity and personal autonomy.
The workshop takes as its starting point a central question for contemporary philosophy of law and social philosophy: whether the traditional categories of human rights remain sufficient to respond to new forms of discrimination, violence and threats to the person, or whether they need to be reinterpreted from renewed legal and philosophical perspectives. This question is particularly relevant in a context marked by the persistence of structural inequalities, the impact of new technologies on human subjectivity, and the emergence of renewed forms of violence, exclusion and vulnerability.
The workshop will be organised around three main lines of debate.
The first line will focus on new perspectives on the principle of equality. Equality, as a structural principle of the constitutional State and of the international human rights system, cannot be understood solely in formal terms. Contemporary societies require a more substantive, material and inclusive understanding, capable of addressing structural discrimination, intersectionality, social diversity and the situation of individuals and groups in conditions of special vulnerability. This line of debate will examine how the principle of equality should be updated in increasingly plural and complex social contexts.
The second line will address new perspectives on human rights in the face of neurotechnologies. The development of technologies capable of recording, interpreting, modulating or altering brain activity raises significant questions concerning particularly sensitive legal interests, such as mental privacy, personal identity, autonomy, psychological integrity, freedom of thought and consent. This line of debate will make it possible to analyse whether existing fundamental rights provide sufficient protection against these new risks or whether it is necessary to move towards new legal categories, such as the so-called neurorights.
The third line will be devoted to new perspectives on gender-based violence. Violence against women constitutes one of the most serious forms of human rights violation, since it directly affects dignity, freedom, equality and physical and moral integrity. This line of debate will examine the conceptual and normative evolution of gender-based violence, as well as its new manifestations in the digital, institutional and social spheres. It will also consider the limits of traditional legal responses and the need to strengthen mechanisms of prevention, protection and reparation.
Overall, the workshop seeks to provide a forum for dialogue between philosophy of law, social philosophy, human rights theory and contemporary legal studies. Its main objective is to analyse the capacity of human rights discourse to adapt to new realities without losing its critical and protective function. The common hypothesis underlying the workshop is that human rights do not constitute a closed and static catalogue, but rather a dynamic normative framework that must be reinterpreted in response to new forms of inequality, vulnerability, violence and technological transformation.
In this way, the workshop aims to contribute to the debate on the updating of human rights in the twenty-first century, paying particular attention to their legal-philosophical foundations, their practical effectiveness and their capacity to protect the person in the face of new social realities.
