Major UB Conference and Book Will Address Violations of Economic Rights in the Western World

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Internationally regarded human rights advocate Claude E. Welch, SUNY Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University at Buffalo, has received a grant from the Canadian government to hold a major academic conference at UB to address violations of economic rights in the Western Hemisphere.

Additional financial support will be provided by UB's Baldy Center on Law and Social Policy and Canadian-American Studies Committee.

The conference will take place Oct. 11-12, 2003, and is expected to result in a book of essays by conference presenters to be edited by Welch, co-director of UB's Human Rights Center, and Rhoda E. Howard-Hassman, professor of sociology and Gladstein Distinguished Professor in Human Rights at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

Speakers will include experts in law, unionism, aboriginal rights, international affairs, political science, sociology and economics, and will address such issues as women's and children's rights, homelessness, indigenous rights, health, political culture, migrant issues, communitarianism and welfare reform.

"Our aim," says Welch, "is to draw attention to the abuses of economic human rights inherent in developed capitalist society, and in particular to the enduring problem of class distinctions. We hope this effort will help alleviate distrust of 'the West' in the international human rights community for our refusal to attend to our own deviations from international human rights law.