Events
School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Melbourne
Featured events
Building the LGBTQI+ movement in Mongolia: advancing inclusive and trans healthcare
May
5
1:00pm - 2:00pm
Seminar or Forum
This seminar explores how LGBTQI+ activists in Mongolia are building a resilient movement through community organizing, public advocacy, and visibility initiatives such as Pride and IDAHOTB. It examines key strategies used to strengthen solidarity, expand civic space, and respond to rising anti-rights narratives. The discussion also highlights efforts to advance more inclusive healthcare systems, particularly improving access to affirming services for trans communities.
By reflecting on both progress and ongoing barriers, the seminar will identify critical challenges and emerging opportunities for sustaining movement growth and ensuring that LGBTQI+ people are meaningfully included in Mongolia’s social, political, and healthcare systems.
2026 Sir Kenneth Bailey Memorial Lecture: State obligations on climate change and human rights: where are we at and where do we go from here?
May
6
6:00pm - 7:00pm
Public Lecture
State obligations on climate change and human rights: where are we at and where do we go from here?
2026 Sir Kenneth Bailey Memorial Lecture
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Climate Change and Human Rights will deliver this year’s lecture at a moment when State obligations on climate change and human rights have become clearer in their nature and content, due to the complementary advisory opinions of three diverse international tribunals.
Professor Elisa Morgera’s lecture will reflect on States’ customary and treaty-based obligations to protect the climate system as part of inter-connected life-supporting systems of the planet, beyond any artificial distinction based on siloed understandings of the environment and planetary health. The lecture will then explore the role of customary law and the international law principles of sustainable development, common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, equity, intergenerational equity, and precaution, in complying with the stringent due diligence obligations to prevent significant harm to the climate system and to human rights.
On that basis, the talk will clarify when “fossil fuel production, fossil fuel consumption, the granting of fossil fuel exploration licences or the provision of fossil fuel subsidies” would indeed “constitute an internationally wrongful act which is attributable to that State,” and outline the implications for the duty of international cooperation. The lecture will be chaired by Professor Margaret Young, ARC Future Fellow and Director of Melbourne Law School’s Institute for International Law and the Humanities (IILAH). The lecture will start at 6:00 pm.
About the Lecture Series
This lecture was inaugurated in 1999, at the Commemoration of the Centenary of the 1899 Hague Peace Conference. The lecture, focusing on Australia in the international legal order, honours the Fourth Dean of the Melbourne Law School, Kenneth Hamilton Bailey, who played a significant part in Australia’s contribution to the formation of the United Nations. The Melbourne Journal of International Law has co-hosted the lecture with the Melbourne Law School since 2016.
