Date/Time: 22 March 2022, 14:30-16:00
Venue: HF Library (UiB) and Zoom
#WorldWaterDay #localwaterstories
On World Water Day 2022 we want to acknowledge and celebrate the efforts by local communities towards protecting their right to drinking water. Experiences in different parts of the globe highlight the multiple challenges that communities face to access drinking water, and the enormous potential that lies in their efforts to protect it. This panel focuses on these efforts, challenges, and new possibilities bringing water activists and academics to conversation.
Guest speakers in their role of Local Water Activists: Nika Kovač (Institute of 8th March), leader of the campaign against the Water Act in Slovenia. Maya Pinzón, water activist in Colombia.
Panelists: Andrea Restrepo-Mieth (University of Pennsylvania), Arkaja Singh (Centre for Policy Research, Delhi/LawTransform), Bruce M. Wilson (University of Central Florida/CMI/LawTransform), Inga Winkler (Central European University in Vienna/LawTransform), in conversation with Charles Epp (University of Kansas). Chair: Angela M Páez (Tennessee State University/LawTransform).
Nika Kovač has a master’s degree in social and cultural anthropology from the University of Ljubljana and is a director of the Institute of 8th March. She has been the leader of the campaign against the Water Act in Slovenia which resulted in winning the “Water referendum”.
Andrea Restrepo-Mieth is a postdoctoral fellow at Perry World House, University of Pennsylvania. She will be joining the Bloustein School at Rutgers University in September 2022 as an Assistant Professor. She holds a Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University, a MPP from the Lee Kuan Yew School, National University of Singapore, and a BA in Economics and International Relations from the State University of New York at New Paltz.
Angela M Páez Murcia is an Assistant professor at the Department of Public Administration, Tennessee State University. Angela received Ph.D. in Public Administration by the University of Kansas. Fulbright Scholar (2009-2011). Research interests: rights’ protection in Latin America, courts and public administration in Latin America, collective litigation, and sociolegal studies.
Arkaja Singh is a Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research (CPR) and a part of the State Capacity Initiative at CPR. Her current work is focussed on regulation of markets. She has several other areas of interest that include municipal government, informal settlements, land, water and sanitation (and especially the issues around sanitation labour and manual scavenging), and the interface of law and the Indian administrative state. Arkaja studied law at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore and has a LL.M. from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.
Bruce M. Wilson is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Central Florida. Orlando, Florida. His current research interests include the politics of Central America, the Caribbean, and Latin American countries, comparative judicial reform, political economy, and political parties and interest groups. Bruce is currently a project leader for the LawTransform project Elevating water rights to human rights: has it strengthened marginalized peoples’ claim to water?.
Charles Epp is a Distinguished Professor at the School of Public Affairs and Administration, University of Kansas. His teaching and research focuses on law, social change and administrative reform, with a particular emphasis on rights and racial discrimination. His research has been supported by multiple grants from the National Science Foundation, and he is the author of many journal articles and several books published by the University of Chicago Press. Charles Epp held an annual lecture on Law & Social Transformation in 2016.
Inga Winkler is an Associate Professor in International Human Rights Law at the Central European University in Vienna, Austria. She is affiliated faculty at the Center on Law and Social Transformation at the University of Bergen, Norway, and was previously a lecturer in human rights at Columbia University in New York. Her research focuses on socio-economic rights and their intersections with gender justice and sustainable development. Her publications include the first comprehensive monograph on the human right to water, the co-edited field-defining Palgrave Handbook on Critical Menstruation Studies, an edited volume on the Sustainable Development Goals, and a range of articles dealing with the human rights to water and sanitation. She served as the Legal Adviser to the first UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights to Water and Sanitation. She holds a German law degree and a PhD in human rights law.
This event is part of the LawTransform project Elevating water rights to human rights: has it strenghten marginalized people’s claim to water?