About the seminar

The REF-ARAB project and the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) invite to a discussion on the relationship between international human rights law and Islamic Law.

For this seminar, we are joined by author and lecturer Dr. Dawood Adesola Hamzah. Focusing on Saudi Arabia, Hamzah will present his book on international law and Muslim states.

Postdoctoral Fellow at UiO, Dr. Charlotte Lysa, will comment on Hamzah’s presentation based on her research on international refugee law in Saudi Arabia as part of the REF-ARAB project.

Moderator is Senior Researcher at NUPI, Dr. Tine Gade.

For registration, please visit NUPI's website here

International human rights law and Islamic law

Both Islam and the West promotes fundamental freedom and human rights. When in 1948 the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Saudi Arabia abstained from signing it contending that the Shari’ah (Islamic Law) had already set out the rights of all mankind.

Thus, signing this instrument was not necessary. This position later culminated into the adoption of The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam (CDHRI) in 1990.

Despite this development, the United Nations (UN), and other stakeholders in UDHR project started to engage the Islamic world on the issues of human rights. This engagement has revealed that the differences between the two regimes might not necessarily create tension and misconception.

Rather the differences would be better managed if the concept of human rights from the perspective of Islam were also recognized.

Saudi Arabia is the cradle and nerve centre of Islam. It is saddled with protecting multipolar interests. The national interest under the watchful eyes of the Traditional Scholars, the interest of the Muslim World with commitment to preserving the Islamic values and orthodox observance of its norms and the interest of the general international community.

How does it maintain an equilibrium in protecting these multipolar interests against the background of the international human rights law forms the focus of analysis of this presentation.

Speakers

Dawood Adesola Hamzah is the author of “International Law and Muslim States. Saudi Arabia in Context”. He holds a PhD in International Law and Islamic Law from School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. He is currently a lecturer at the Faculty of Law, Lagos State University in Nigeria, and was previously Teaching Fellow at the Department of Law, SOAS. Additionally, Hamzah has several years of experience from Saudi Arabia as a lawyer and writer.

Charlotte Lysa is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law, University of Oslo. As part of the REF-ARAB project, she studies refugee protection in Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia's interaction with international refugee law.

Tine Gade is Senior Research Fellow in NUPI’s Research Group on Peace, Conflict and Development. She holds a PhD in political science from Sciences Po in Paris and works predominantly issues related to contentious politics and state-society relationships in the Middle East.