Lecture "SED-Menschenrechtspolitik und ihre Wirkung"

Human rights in the GDR are closely linked to the opposition movements and the demo-cratic transformation of 1989/90. But the SED also tried to claim human rights for itself: as a political weapon against the Federal Republic and as a diplomatic tool in relation to the colonised world. Although the SED's instrumentalisation of human rights never really met with approval in the GDR or abroad, it nevertheless had an important influence on the shaping of East German foreign policy and the rise of human rights as a means of opposition.

Ned Richardson-Little studied history at McGill University in Montréal, Canada and received his PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on human rights discourse in the GDR. Since 2019, he has been a junior research group leader at the University of Erfurt in the Volkswagen Foundation Freigeist project: "The Other Global Germany: Transnational Criminality and Deviant Globalization in the 20th Century".