The intersection of internal displacement in the context of armed conflict and violence with climate change and disasters

Abstract

The Global Classroom is one of the flagship international activities of the Global Campus of Human Rights, the aim of which is to bring together students, professors and experts from all its regional programmes. The Classroom conducts team research on a topic of current interest for all the regions involved, and this is studied, analysed and discussed through the lenses of different regional perspectives in a week-long conference. The discussion is enriched with the participation of experts including representatives of states, United Nations (UN) agencies and civil society organisations (CSOs). The uniqueness of this annual event lies in the possibility of understanding key regional perspectives and deepening the study of global human rights and democracy challenges.

Since 2014, it has become an established practice to link the Global Classroom event to the annual Global Campus (GC) research programme. The benefit of this is the opportunity for students, academics and experts to interact in an open lively forum and provide inputs which could feed into the research programme and enrich its findings. The 2022 Global Classroom was hosted by GC Africa and coordinated by the University of Pretoria’s Centre for Human Rights in Pretoria, South Africa, from 30 May to 4 June 2022. This year's Global Classroom research theme was internal displacement. Students from the GC regional programmes came together to present their work on internal displacement to an audience made up of experts from academia, government agencies, UN and CSOs. Notably, the event was attended by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs).