The Manuel Ballbé Chair held the International Seminar “Human Security, Global Law and Human Rights.”

On Tuesday, May 12, the Manuel Ballbé Chair in Human Security and Global Law at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, under the Executive Direction of Dr. Roser Martínez, together with the Administrative Law Area of the Department of Public Law and Historical-Legal Sciences of the UAB, held the International Seminar “Human Security, Global Law and Human Rights,” an academic space aimed at reflecting on the contemporary challenges of human security from an interdisciplinary, global, and critical perspective.

The seminar was organized and moderated by Professor José Darío Argüello-Rueda, professor in the Department of Public Law and researcher at the Manuel Ballbé Chair, and featured the participation of three invited speakers of recognized international standing.

Professor Luis-Andrés Cucarella Galiana, Professor of Procedural Law at the University of Valencia, delivered the lecture “Climate Emergency and Judicial Protection of Human Rights,” in which he addressed the challenges posed by the climate crisis for the effective judicial protection of human rights, especially in contexts of vulnerability, state omission, and public responsibility.

For her part, Professor of Environmental Law Diana Marcela Santacruz Ordóñez, from the Universidad Autónoma del Cauca, contributed with the lecture “Colombia in the Face of the Climate Crisis: Biodiversity, Energy Transition and Global Leadership,” highlighting Colombia’s strategic role in global debates on biodiversity, climate justice, energy transition, and territorial protection.

Finally, Professor and Public Health researcher Pietro Ferrara, from the Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, presented the lecture “Health Is Not Distributed at Random: Social and Environmental Determinants of Inequality through the Lens of Human Security,” in which he offered a critical reading of the unequal distribution of health and its relationship with the social, environmental, and territorial determinants of inequality.

The seminar included the attendance, interventions, and questions of undergraduate students and PhD candidates in Human Security and Global Law, who actively participated in the final discussion. At the center of the debate were the various dimensions of human security, particularly at the intersection of the environment, human and planetary health, climate, human rights, and ecological justice.

From the moderator’s role, Professor Argüello emphasized the need to move toward an ecocentric security framework capable of addressing the challenges of environmental regulation, ecological and energy transition, and the redefinition of development models. He highlighted the importance of overcoming logics based on the unlimited exploitation of nature, in order to transition toward models that place Nature —including human beings and other forms and systems of life— at the center of public and private decision-making.

The meeting opened a plural dialogue on the limits of the traditional human security paradigm and the need to expand its horizons toward approaches that integrate social justice, ecological justice, public health, climate governance, and the rights of Nature as central elements in the new debates of global public law.