The IAMSCU Human Rights Network will meet in June to discuss recent events and the current situation worldwide regarding the promotion and violation of human rights. IAMSCU’s work focusing on Human Rights started during the 2008 IAMSCU Conference in Rosario, Argentina. The conference included a session on Human Rights, and this led to continuous conversations on this topic. Based on these conversations and exchanges among scholars, the group continued to meet and prepare sessions for the IAMSCU Conference. This eventually became the IAMSCU Human Rights Network.
Human Rights continued to be a high priority for IAMSCU. It was a key topic during the IAMSCU Conference in Washington, DC (USA) in 2011 as well as a meeting at American University, which focused on Human Rights and Business Ethics. It was the main theme, together with peace, at the IAMSCU Conference in Hiroshima (Japan) in 2014. This theme was also included in the 2017 IAMSCU Conference in Puebla (Mexico) whose theme was “Tearing Down the Walls” and the IAMSCU Conference in London, Bath, Bristol, and Cambridge (UK) in 2023, based on the theme “Transforming Lives.”
With these activities, the group increased and decided to establish a research network. One of the leading members of the network is Professor Mab Huang, a professor of political theory and Director of the Chang Fo-chuan Center for the Study of Human Rights at Soochow University (Taiwan), with expertise in China and Taiwan, who received the IAMSCU Research Award in 2017. Another member was Professor Hans Morsink, a United Methodist professor of political science at Drew University (USA) whose internationally acclaimed books focused on human rights. His book The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Origins Drafting and Intent (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999) was acclaimed as, “the definitive work on the drafting of the twentieth century’s most important human rights document.” Morsink’s dream was to have every student at a Methodist-related school, college, university or seminary carrying a copy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights issued by IAMSCU and as their passport.
The network has received considerable impulse with a series of activities organized by the Human Rights Program at Soochow University in Taipei (Taiwan), the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at the Washington College of Law of the American University in Washington, DC (USA), the Universidad del Centro Latinoamericano (Argentina), the Stockholm University College (Sweden), and the Center for Reconciliation and the Human Rights Center at Duke University (USA). Many other Methodist-related institutions with strong research programs on human rights (in Argentina, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Sweden, United States, and others) have been very active in the IAMSCU Human Rights Network. This coalition of research centers around the world is now addressing the current challenges to human rights.