Join us for an engaging event that examine s the critical link between a state's responsibility to prevent human right s violations and the design of its constitutional institutions. Drawing on experiences from the Global South\, including Nepal\, South Africa\, and Sr i Lanka\, this event will explore Guarantor Institutions\, such as Election s Commissions and Human Rights Commissions. These institutions are designed to guarantee non-self-enforcing constitutional norms and serve as an insti tutional mechanism to prevent human rights violations. From a design perspe ctive\, these institutions are distinct from the traditional branches of th e state and give expression to the guarantor functions of the state. Experi ences in the Global South suggest that these institutions aim to tackle sta te capture but remain vulnerable to the same. These experiences suggest tha t these are a new type of constitutional institutions that have the potenti al to give expression to the duty of states to prevent human rights violati ons.
Panelists
Dinesha Samararatne is a Professor at the Dep artment of Public & International Law at the Faculty of Law of the Universi ty of Colombo\, Sri Lanka\, Senior Fellow of the Melbourne Law School\, Aus tralia and an independent expert to the Constitutional Council of Sri Lanka . Her research interests include judicial review\, constitutional resilienc e\, women and constitutional law\, guarantor institutions\, academic freedo m and the relevance of the global south in comparative constitutional law. She read for her LLM at Harvard Law in 2009 as a Junior Fulbright Scholar.
Manisha Dissanayake 25’ (Moderator) is a lawyer with a focus on huma n rights and constitutional law practicing in the Court of Appeal and Supre me Court of Sri Lanka. Founding Director of The Arka Initiative\, an NGO wo rking on sexual and reproductive rights issues primarily in the grassroots. LL.B. from the London School of Economics and Political Science. MA from t he University of Colombo.
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