Join us at the 5th International Social Justice Conference

Published September 25, 2024, by Carla Bernardo

The DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Food Security (CoE-FS) will join multiple global and national partners, including the South African government and the United Nations, at the 5th International Social Justice Conference and the 6th Annual Social Justice Summit, taking place in Cape Town, from 16 to 18 October 2024.

The Conference and Summit are hosted by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), which is based at Stellenbosch University, and led by social justice giant and former Public Protector of South Africa, Professor Thuli Madonsela. This year, the CoE-FS, and the UNESCO Chair in Science and Education for African Food Systems, hosted at the CoE-FS and held by director Professor Julian May, are Conference and Summit partners.

Also joining as partners are the Artscape; Department of International Relations and Cooperation; Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation; South African Human Rights Commission; UN South Africa; Daily Maverick; Stellenbosch University International; and the Southern Africa Food Lab, led by CoE-FS collaborating researcher, Professor Scott Drimie.

International human rights defender and climate activist Catherine Constantinides will direct the Conference programme.

5th International Social Justice Conference

The theme for this year’s Conference is “Social Justice and Sustainable Development Goal on Zero Hunger”. According to the CSJ, the Conference will “interrogate research, policies and legal developments on hunger, with a view to increasing the pace of progress in addressing hunger as one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals”. It will bring together academics, lawyers, judges and civil society researchers who are involved in research on the intersection between hunger, social justice and human rights, to share research outputs and explore innovative solutions and best practices on the integration of data science and neuroscience in social and legal policy design processes.

Details:

Date: 16-17 October 2024
Venue: Artscape Theatre
Tickets are available for purchase via Quicket
Download the Concept Note here.

6th Annual Social Justice Summit

According to the CSJ, the Summit, which is in its sixth iteration, is “a decision-making structure that moves the needle one inch at a time on the Musa Plan”.

“While the Summit primarily focuses on South Africa, it also looks at the rest of the world as a benchmark. In its sixth iteration, the Summit seeks to provide a platform to locate ‘Hunger’ within the broader social context of structural social injustice that plunges some into hunger and related multi-dimensional aspects of poverty,” notes the CSJ.

Conflict, climate change, gender discrimination, weak government and health systems all play a role in driving hunger. This, the Summit also seeks to integrate social justice thinking into policy-making, with a view to accelerating the progress on the SDGs, particularly SDG 10 (reducing inequality), taken with SDGs 1 (zero poverty), 2 (zero hunger), 5 (gender equality), 13 (climate reclamation) and 16 (peace, justice and strong institutions).

Details: