On Tuesday the participants took part in the lectures about the most important universal values. Both of two experts Paweł Filipek and Katarzyna Przybysławska focused on the basic human rights.
In the beginning of the lecture Paweł Filipek presented the definition of human rights. “Is happiness a human right?” – he asked a controversial question and admitted that not everything can be provided by the state. He also mentioned about the process of institutionalization of universal values and showed the three main steps, which include choosing values and putting them in legal system. The last and probably the most important one is creating the appropriate institutions and procedures.
“People were objects, not subjects, in the law before 20th century” – Paweł Filipek mentioned in the part dedicated to the evolution of human rights. He added that though the history of them is not so long, the biggest nowadays problem is there are too many guarantees. The expert focused therefore on the EU law and presented many interesting cases as google case, which concerned a right to be forgotten in the Internet.
Refugees, migrants and stateless persons
The second expert Katarzyna Przybysławska works in the The Halina Nieć Legal Aid Central, which is a non-profit non-governmental organisation established in 2002 in Krakow. HNLAC’s main objective is to protect human rights by providing free legal aid to persons at risk of social exclusion and discrimination, including the poor, victims of domestic violence, foreigners, asylum seekers and refugees.
Katarzyna Przybysławska startet her lecture with a definition of refugees based on the Geneva Convention from 1951 in which we can find the ways to protects their rights. “Is there hope for the refugees in the Mediterranean region?” – she asked during a discuss about the nowadays refugees problem in EU, what was the most interesting topic for the participants. The audience was also shocked because of the photos of the biggest refugees camps, ways to reach Europe through the Mediterranean Sea and recent data.
At the end of 2014 59,5 mln people worldwide were forcibly displaced, what is 8,3 mln more than at the end 2013. But only a little number of them found refuge in Europe. The world’s top refugee host are Turkey, Pakistan, Iran, Ethiopia, Jordan and Lebanon which hosted by far the largest number of refugees by population: 232 per 1,000 inhabitants. Due to these facts the participants discussed with the expert the ways to resolve the crisis. “Refugees are usually a hot potato” – admitted Katarzyna Przybysławska saying about the problems refuse to accept refugees by the V4 countries.
