For the next lecture in the University of Pretoria (UP) Sustainable Development Goals Lecture Series, Professor Stephanie Burton, Vice-Principal for Research and Postgraduate Education at UP, is pleased to invite academic staff and postgraduate students of the University to attend a lecture entitled “Addressing SDG 16: Peace, justice and strong institutions - A proposed role for the University of Pretoria” to be presented by Professors Christof Heyns and Thomas Probert.

The problem of violence is of special relevance to Africa, one of the most violent regions in the world. However, very little systematic and multi-disciplinary academic research is being conducted on the continent in this regard. Human rights and violence reduction approaches offer two different but complementary responses to this phenomenon – both directly relevant to the realisation of peaceful societies as envisaged by SGD 16. The speakers will illustrate the need for an inter-disciplinary focus on this problem on African soil. Drawing on their work on a global scale in the context of the United Nations during the last decade, they make the case that the University of Pretoria is ideally situated to fill this gap.

Christof Heyns is Director of the Institute for International and Comparative Law in Africa and professor of human rights law at the University of Pretoria. He is a former dean of the Faculty of Law. He is a faculty member of the human rights master’s programmes at the University of Oxford and of the transitional justice master’s programme at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, and an adjunct professor at the American University in Washington, DC. In 2017 Heyns was appointed as a member of the United Nations Human Rights Committee, and he served as UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions from 2010 to 2016. During 2016 he chaired the UN Independent Investigation on Burundi. He holds degrees in law and philosophy from the universities of Pretoria and the Witwatersrand, and from Yale Law School. He has been a Humboldt Fellow at the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg and a Fulbright Fellow at Harvard Law School.

Thomas Probert is an extraordinary lecturer in the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria and a senior researcher at the Institute for International and Comparative Law in Africa, where he is responsible for its research on a new initiative, ‘Freedom from Violence’. He is also a research associate of the Centre of Governance and Human Rights at the University of Cambridge.

Enquiries [email protected] Persons with disabilities are requested to contact Neo Maseko on 012 420 2631 if assistance is required. Please book early as seats are limited.