UCL Human Rights Gateway Conference
12/02/2018
Today, I was fortunate enough to attend a one-day human rights conference.
This was the structure of my day:
8:20am-9:30am : train to UCL
10:00am-10:30am: Registration
10:30am-10:45am: UCL Welcome Talk
10:45am-11:20am: How to Apply to a Competitive University Session
11:20am-11:30am: Break
11:30am-12:00pm: Lecture - History of Human Rights by Grace Redhead (PhD student at UCL)
12:00pm-12:30pm: Lecture- Human Rights and Latin America by Sebastian Smart (PhD student at UCL)
12:30pm-1:10pm: Lunch
1:10pm-1:55pm: Seminar (discussing either of the lectures- History of Human Rights with Grace Redhead or Human Rights and Latin America with Sebastian Smart)
1:55pm-2:10pm: Break
2:10pm-2:40pm: Panel featuring Alumni, Student and a External Speaker
2:40pm-3:10pm: External Speaker 3:10pm-3:30pm: Evaluation and close
3:30pm-4:40pm: Travel back home
The day at UCL for the Human Rights conference, was absolutely amazing. Upon arrival, we received a delegate pack which contained a UCL bag, a badge, a multi-coloured pen, the schedule for the day, a UCL highlighter, a UCL notebook and a phone speaker.
The sessions welcoming us- included a brief history of UCL. It is the 3rd oldest university in the UK (founded in 1826) and the first to admit people regardless of race, religion and class and the first to admit women on the same terms as men. UCL has also had a long-lasting rivalry with KCL. The entry requirements vary from course to course but are in the range A*A*A-ABB. UCL has an extremely high ranking world-wide, it placed 7th on the QS World University rankings.
The second session went over the UCAS process and personal statements. This was quite helpful, as personal statements are often the hardest aspect of the application when applying to university and are only 47 lines or 4000 characters, so it is important to know what to include. We discussed a few short snippets and learned about how to structure a personal statement.
We had a brief break and has our lecture on the History of Human Rights with Grace Redhead. Grace is a PhD student and her lecture was really interesting. It looked at 3 separate events that happened and explained the link. The first event was on the 21st of June in 1948 where the Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury (this was a boat of migrants from the Caribbean entering the UK).
The second event happened on the 5th of July 1948. This day was the appointed day which began the beginning of the welfare state . And the third event happened on the 10th of December 1948 which was the day the Declaration of Human Rights were formally ratified.
The link between these events wasn't obvious at first. But as Grace explained it, it made a lot of sense. Article 25 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights was the link. "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services".
The link was sickle cell anaemia which is a genetic blood disease which can be life-threatening. People who had this were migrants from the Caribbean, they often didn't receive sufficient healthcare. Many healthcare workers had in mind these racist stereotypes that the migrants would bring in new diseases or put a strain on the newly formed NHS. Sickle cell anaemia causes a lot of pain, often unbearable and when patients came to A&E because of they pain, they were often accused of seeking drugs. People with this condition weren't screened properly until 2002, so many people passed this on to their children- it is dangerous as people with it may die in surgery or operations due to risk of general anaesthesia. Brent had the highest population of people who had sickle cell anaemia and a study found d that in 1980, 3/4's of healthcare staff didn't receive training to adequately provide medical care for sickle cell anaemia patients.
The next lecture was by Sebastian Smart who looked at Human Rights in Latin America.
Latin America is rich with resources It contains:
- 12% of all arable soils in the world
The link between these events wasn't obvious at first. But as Grace explained it, it made a lot of sense. Article 25 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights was the link. "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services".
The link was sickle cell anaemia which is a genetic blood disease which can be life-threatening. People who had this were migrants from the Caribbean, they often didn't receive sufficient healthcare. Many healthcare workers had in mind these racist stereotypes that the migrants would bring in new diseases or put a strain on the newly formed NHS. Sickle cell anaemia causes a lot of pain, often unbearable and when patients came to A&E because of they pain, they were often accused of seeking drugs. People with this condition weren't screened properly until 2002, so many people passed this on to their children- it is dangerous as people with it may die in surgery or operations due to risk of general anaesthesia. Brent had the highest population of people who had sickle cell anaemia and a study found d that in 1980, 3/4's of healthcare staff didn't receive training to adequately provide medical care for sickle cell anaemia patients.
The next lecture was by Sebastian Smart who looked at Human Rights in Latin America.
Latin America is rich with resources It contains:
- 12% of all arable soils in the world
- 1/3rd of all freshwater reserves
- 1/5th of oil reserves
- 25% of biofuel
However, 1/3rd of people live on less than $1.50 a day (which is under the poverty line). Latin America has been growing (in 2017, the growth rate was 1.1%). It is the most unequal region and has a historical trend of inequality- for over 500 years since colonisation. Inequality intensified during the implementation of neoliberalism, it was implemented during political regimes headed by dictators. In Chile in 1970, the first democratically elected socialist president was elected. 3 years later he was overthrow by a military coup (the coup was supported by the US government). During this, there was a gross violation of human rights. 200,000 people were exiled and 38,254 were imprisoned as well as 2,279 people who were sadly murdered.
We also looked at women who are often misrepresented and are divided due to economic and political models and femicides- where women are killed just because they are women (in 2014, 1903 happened). We looked at migrants and how they are criminalised in the US and indigenous people whose rights are often exploited or ignored.
We then had lunch and went to a seminar. I went to the Human Rights violation in Latin America seminar.
Sebastian told us about extractivism, which refers to an economic model centred on the large-scale removal of natural resources for the purposes of exporting raw material. We looked at Nicaragua- a community affected by Law 840. Law 840 was a law implemented by the government which permitted a Chinese company to take as much land as they wanted for a river canal. The canal would slice the country in half and forcibly displace 120,000 people.
We watched a video about a particular woman who lives in a rural community who passionately argued against this. As a result, she was detained several times without cause and her family often were punished too.
We watched a video about a particular woman who lives in a rural community who passionately argued against this. As a result, she was detained several times without cause and her family often were punished too.
Her son was actually left in a plastic bag and another was nearly decapitated. When she complained to the police about the mishandling of the cases, she wasn't listened to. This was because, she was actively arguing against the river canal. It was quite harrowing to listen to this. Coming from the UK, I'm quite fortunate to have the right to criticise my government and oppose decisions without fear of being targeted or falsely imprisoned. Human rights violations are more common than we think and this seminar really sparked an interest, which I hope to pursue in my EPQ.
The next activity was a panel. Questions about university, personal statements and UCL were asked. Many focused on living in London (the costs associated and whether it would be different than going to a campus based university).
The last activity was a external speaker who spoke about his work at a NGO called Liberty. Liberty is also known as the National Council for Civil Liberties. It was founded in 1934, they are a cross party, non-party membership organisation at the heart of the movement for fundamental rights and freedoms in the UK. They have handled specific cases which have even gone to the European Court of Justice. The work they do is amazing and I really want to volunteer with them if I go to UCL/ any London university. We then filled in our evaluation forms and left.
I'd recommend googling UCL widening participation to find free events which allow you to explore UCL and whatever subjects you're interested in!