EIUC and the Municipality of Venice: launch of the Human Rights Village
On Friday 15th 2011 from 4.15 p.m. in the Piovego room at Palazzo Ducale will take place the solemn signature of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Municipality of Venice and the European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights and Democratisation (EIUC) for the creation of the Human Rights Village (HRV) around the Monastery of San Nicolò in Lido of Venice. The Human Rights Village aims at becoming a centre of excellence in the world for an holistic model to teaching, training, research, advocacy, counselling, democratisation, peace, justice, and sustainable development as well as other interrelated issues.
It is significant that the ceremony will take place in the same room where on 6th October 1997 took place the opening ceremony of the first academic year of the European Master in Human Rights and Democratisation promoted by the Human Rights Centre of the University of Padua in partnership with 10 Universities, now 41. In that occasion, Mary Robinson, the then United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, sent a vibrant encouraging message. On Friday, Mrs. Robinson will give a lectio magistralis on Implications of the Arab Spring for Human Rights in the 21st Century and will be awarded the "EIUC Medal of Honor".
Creating a new space for human rights in the area including the Monastery of San Nicolò and the adjoining barracks Guglielmo Pepe of the Fanti da Mar, has been an objective since the beginning of the European Master, and it was achieved at last thanks to the sensitiveness of the Mayor Giorgio Orsoni and the tenacity of the persons responsible of the Master and of the EIUC.