Chancellor Dr Irene Khan – Installation Speech - University of Salford

I hope that Salford will take up the holistic approach to human rights – what region of the UK more than Salford could be best suited to doing that and so better understanding the real grievances that underlie poverty, discrimination, exclusion and alienation, let’s be alert to the ways in which racism and xenophobia are being fanned. Economists tell us that economic growth in recent years has done much to eradicate poverty and that is true. Many millions of people are better off today than their parents or grand parents were. Life expectancy has risen in many countries, illiteracy rates are falling, and diseases like small pox have been eradicated. But as human rights activists we need to ask who is being left behind, who is marginalized and outside that circle of prosperity. In India – a budding global power -­‐ which has launched its own unmanned space rocket – more than 50% of children living in rural areas are underweight because they do not have enough to eat. And what is worse still is that the proportion has remained unchanged since 1992 when India began its trajectory of growth. But coming closer to home, in greater Manchester, in an arc of only ten miles or so from the south to the north, the life span falls by several years, I am told! Conclusion In the three decades since I was a law student, I have learnt that justice is not just about legal text but about values and principles, it is about the lived experience of people. Human rights are not about treaties but about right and wrong. Torture is wrong not only because it violates international law but because t is the ultimate corruption of humanity. Poverty is wrong because it disempowers and denies people control over their destiny. I am an activist. To an activist, commentary from the sidelines is not enough. When we see threats, we must tackle them. When we see wrongs, we must right them. Academics give depth and meaning to our action. Together I hope scholarship and action can make a difference to the world. I hope too that under the leadership of the incoming Vice Chancellor, Prof Martin Hall, whose experience of South Africa gives him a real understanding of human rights, Salford University will engage with the realities of deprivation, discrimination and alienation, on its own door step. I hope the university will engage with those issues, debate them and confront them – in curricula, in its policies and practices. In January this year I was in Bangladesh, my own country, with an AI delegation. We visited a legal literacy project on human rights in a village in northern Bangladesh. As you can see in this photo, it is nothing more than a group of women sitting on bamboo mats in the dusty village enclosure. The class we visited were learning about the law prohibiting child marriage and requiring the informed consent of a woman to marriage. These women had given loans through a micro-­‐credit scheme