Gender, Equalities, Knowledges, Lands and Sustain/abilities:
Truths vs. ‘Climate Adaptations’ for all Forms of Life
March 6-7, 2020
Feminist Legal Studies and the Faculty of Law, Queen’s University, Kingston
Feminist Legal Studies Queen’s is framing its annual International Women’s Day (IWD) conference on March 6-7, 2020 around the United Nation's IWD 2020 theme: “An equal world is an enabled world.”
The UN's call for global equalities is for full substantive equalities among all peoples in all contexts – the eradication of all forms of structural barriers, intersectional inequalities perpetuated systemically and institutionally by law, public policies, politics, and powerholders, multiple forms of discrimination, and degradation of the biosphere and thus of sustainable life.
Essential to this call for an enabled world are equal access for all to –
- land and property, life-nourishing food, clean water, human governance capacities and development actions that preserve and protect the sustainability of the biosphere,
- equality and empowerment of women, and more equitable structures for promoting capabilities and distribution of resources and opportunities to promote and sustain all equally,
- eradicating the disparate negative impacts of existing governance practices on Indigenous and distinctive peoples,
- expansion of the knowledges and learnings from diverse Indigenous truths both past and emerging, including truths designed not to 'govern' peoples with powerholder laws but to match human aspirations and changes to the pace of evolution of the biosphere itself, and,
- eliminating distributional inequalities and extractions arising from and contributing to concentrations of wealth, governance power, political capture, and privilege.
We are delighted to have as our guide Professor Val Napoleon, Law Foundation Professor of Aboriginal Justice and Governance, and Queen’s University 2019-2020 Principal’s Development Fund Visiting Scholar, who will launch this conference as the opening keynote lecture; https://www.uvic.ca/law/facultystaff/facultydirectory/napoleon.php. Dr. Napoleon’s critical conceptual, international, national, and Indigenous methodological and detailed research, published works, creative educational and advocacy techniques, and pioneering curricular and institutional innovations are unparalleled. Among her major initiatives at the University of Victoria Faculty of Law is the establishment of a first of its kind-Indigenous Law Research Unit that focuses on a wide range of research issues including lands, waters, resources, gender and Indigenous knowledges, learnings, engagements with laws, and dispute resolution, and the publication of a much anticipated forthcoming book, Creating Indigenous Property: Power, Rights, and Relationships, eds. Angela Cameron and Sari Graben, and Val Napoleon, (Univ. of Toronto Press, 2020).
We continue the annual FLSQ conference conversation that seeks to address the range of issues arising from the global shifts mandated by the United Nations treaty the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1981), and the implementation procedures to be used set out in the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995, 2000). This year's theme considers how these instruments, among others, all of which apply to the extension of substantive equality and Indigenous peoples' status, rights, and truths via the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Paris Accord on Climate Change, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as well as to all human rights instruments designed to eradicate intersecting and multiple forms of discrimination that disproportionately disadvantage racialized, Indigenous, low income, disabled, migrant, nonurban, and segregated persons, particularly those disadvantaged by gender and identity intersectionalities.
FLSQ is calling for papers that address issues of global and contextual (in)equalities and empowerment, promotion of equal relations, securing basic necessities alleviating conditions of poverty and structural inequalities – from food to income, physical, and personal security – toward the promotion of greater innovative capacity, equality of all, and biosphere sustainability.
This conference also welcomes contributions that document how increasingly remedial Beijing Platform implementation outcomes have addressed any and all of the 17 SDGs, their indicators, and their targets -- particularly those that contain commitments to gender and context-driven commitments (eg, SDGs 1, 4, 5, 8, 10, and 17), and the roles of governance and nongovernmental organizations in meeting the research and data gaps that prevent full analysis of the 85 indicators used to effectively monitor fulfillment of the five SDGs with multifactoral equality and/or gender-related specifics. For SDGs, targets, and indicators, see https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/indicators/indicators-list/ ).
We encourage submissions that speak truth to power, address Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommendations and commitments to promote appropriate cultural competency, advance the study of Aboriginal people and the law, the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Treaties and Aboriginal rights, Indigenous law, Aboriginal-Crown relations, and Indigenous knowledges, learnings, and truths.
Date, Location, Accessibility, and Childcare:
Robert Sutherland Hall, Policy Studies building, 138 Union St., room 202 (accessible), Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario -- Friday and Saturday, March 6-7, 2020; request childcare needed.
Submitting proposals for presentations or papers, by Feb. 1, 2020:
Email a one paragraph outline to Kathleen Lahey, kal2@queensu.ca and Bita Amani, amanib@queensu.ca and copy Events Coordinator, Megan Hamilton, megan.hamilton@queensu.ca, by Feb. 1, 2020. Acceptances will be issued on a rolling basis beginning Jan. 15, 2020.
Hotel bookings and travel funding for those proposing papers and/or panel events:
If proposed speakers need a hotel in Kingston, we must hear from you before Jan. 15. If you can speak only with FLSQ funding, please provide minimum cost estimates.
Hotel bookings for those self-funding must be made by Feb. 7, 2020 to secure the preferred rate:
FLSQ Booking Link
For assistance contact: Anna Marie Devos, 613 547-4496 (Mon-Fri, 8:00am-4:30 pm), via reservationshikw@innvesthotels.com, or by phone, 613-549-8400, or Toll Free, 1-800-HOLIDAY. Request a room in the FLSQ block. Book early as there’s a competing event in Kingston that week.
For further information contact: Profs. Bita Amani, amanib@queensu.ca or Kathleen Lahey, kal2@queensu.ca, Co-Directors, Feminist Legal Studies Queen’s, Faculty of Law, Queen’s Univ.
2020 Conference Schedule
Queen's University sits on the traditional lands of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe peoples.