University of Melbourne Events Calendar

2024 Miegunyah Distinguished Visiting Fellow Lecture

Human Rights, Domestic Violence and the Family Law System: the Continuance of the Public/Private Divide

Please join us for pre-lecture canapes and refreshments from 5pm prior to the lecture commencement at 6pm.

Janet Zignon has argued that the constant utilisation of human rights language results in a maintenance of the ‘truth’ of the global morality of human rights. In doing so, she notes the necessity of the state in constantly declaring the centrality of human rights which in turn provides human rights with actual and practical effect in the world. This analysis is particularly illuminating when applied to the relative success of the women’s human rights movement, in challenging the ‘public/private divide.’

However, the ‘truth’ of human rights within the nexus of family law, gender and domestic abuse has yet to materialise. The response of family justice systems towards victims of domestic abuse across the world epitomises a lack of understanding of the dynamics of domestic abuse and the utilisation of family law proceedings by perpetrators to continue abuse. Most stark is the lack of reference to human rights law. The private arena of family law has remained largely untroubled by advances in understanding concerning domestic abuse and the applicability of due diligence standards and positive obligations in this regard. This lecture will provide a detailed overview of these issues and an analysis of the relevance of international human rights law.

In contemporary activism there is a growing realisation that there is an urgent need to distinguish between tools for (decentralised) organisation and (broad) mobilisation that scale up. Social media platforms have mixed the two up (news & personal messages), to the point of becoming unworkable, exhausting, unleashing mental health crises, on top of creating dangerous situations in terms surveillance.

The social media hegemony is not yet broken but there are many cracks in its architecture—and appeal. While the Internet Question seems stagnant and unresolved, the hype caravan has moved on. From VR, crypto and Web3 we are now all in the grip of ‘AI’ as the latest marketing term for machine learning and large language models that feeds its generic ’summary’ content back into the Web. While the ‘infuencer’ persona is in decline, the mass obsession with likes, views, comments, swiping from one TikTok video to the next, retweets funny memes continues. What will disrupt the ‘bored billions’ is the automation of activism (already visible in the current waves of fake news and deep fakes).

While officials raise the ethics issue of AI for Good, asking the impossible question how to build ‘responsible’ extraction software, hackers, designers and other artists are coding subversive tools that disrupt and undermine the totalitarian system of control, ‘polluting’ data bases, turning fake news and monstrous images upside down.

The message is clear: the world prepares for planetary cyberwarfare. Are you ready?