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IN THIS SECTION
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PAST EVENTS
The Human Rights Center has hosted or co-sponsored major international conferences on emerging issues in human rights research and humanitarian law.
OCTOBER 2007
October 13, 12 Noon (Homecoming Weekend) Over the past three years, the International Criminal Court has issued indictments and arrest warrants against alleged war criminals in Sudan, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Central African Republic. Yet some local traditional and religious leaders feel the threat of international trials is prolonging armed conflicts in these countries and preventing peace and reconciliation. When the interests of peace and justice conflict, there are never any easy answers. Join faculty and staff of the Human Rights Center for a discussion of the dilemmas presented by peace negotiations and the challenges of implementing international criminal justice. October 25, 4 PM to 6 PM In summer 2007 representatives of the Human Rights Center and Johns Hopkins University released a report documenting how decades of repressive rule, civil war, and poor governance have contributed to the spread of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other infectious diseases in Burma. For the report, researchers traveled to Rangoon and Burma’s borders with China, Thailand, Bangladesh, and India. Join them for a panel discussion to hear their findings, recommendations, current activities and plans for the future. Read the press release or download the report. Co-sponsored by the Center for Southeast Asia Studies. October 29, 4 PM to 5:15 PM October 31, 12 Noon Human rights reporting typically relies on qualitative data to reveal the extent and causes of human rights abuses and their impact on victims. Qualitative data has been critical in providing a three-dimensional portrayal of the experiences of individuals, however, it does not reveal much about the scope of the crisis, patterns of violence, and how people are affected broadly. Dr. Vinck will discuss his use of quantitative methodologies to gain a more accurate picture of how civilians are affected by the civil war in northern Uganda, the experiences of child soldiers conscripted to serve in rebel forces in northern Uganda, and the conditions under which construction workers labor in rebuilding post-Katrina New Orleans. NOVEMBER
November 1, 10 AM to 5 PM Human Rights Fellows Conference and Poster Session Maude Fife Room, 315 Wheeler Hall The twelve Human Rights Fellows of 2007 will present the results of their fieldwork, which took them to ten different countries around the world. Fellows worked with organizations on topics ranging from rights of Guantanamo detainees to gender-based asylum claims in South Africa to the rights of the hearing impaired in India. November 1, 5 PM to 7:30 PM In this lecture, Maass will discuss his journey into Iraq at an early turning point: the invasion of 2003 and its aftermath. On the first morning of the invasion, Maass witnessed a wave of looting in the border town of Safwan. After the Marines he was following mistakenly killed a number of civilians while seizing a bridge outside Baghdad, Maass watched these same troops tear down the statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square. Once the looting of Baghdad subsided, Maass travelled to Najaf and met with Moqtada al-Sadr, who was beginning to consolidate his power base. Maass will discuss how Iraq’s disintegration was visible even in its earliest post-Saddam days. Co-sponsored by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. November 1, 6 PM In his 1999 book, Disposable People, Kevin Bales brought to light the existence of modern slavery and described how, nearly two hundred years after the slave trade was abolished, global slavery stubbornly persists. In his new book, Ending Slavery, Bales again presents the ideas and insights that can finally lead to slavery's extinction and freedom for the 27 million people currently held in slavery worldwide. Recalling his own involvement in the antislavery movement, he recounts the lives and stories of todays slaves, and explains how governments and citizens can build a world without slavery. President of the human rights organization Free the Slaves, he joins the Council to discuss what is needed to bring global slavery to an end and how to rebuild the lives of freed slaves and victims of human trafficking. Sponsored by the World Affairs Council. Co-sponsored by the Human Rights Center. November 5, 6 PM British investigative journalist Stephen Grey joins the Council for a screening of his PBS’s FRONTLINE video report, Extraordinary Rendition, and to discuss the CIA’s controversial practice of kidnapping terror suspects for interrogation, often in countries where torture is common. Grey is a leading authority on the Agency’s controversial “rendition” program, having quit his job as head of investigations at The Sunday Times of London in order to pursue his investigation independently. Author of Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA’s Rendition and Torture Program and one of the first reporters to track the CIA’s rendition flights around the world, he travels to sites in Europe and Africa, and ultimately to Washington, D.C. for this report, which presents new details and evidence about the U.S. government’s clandestine interrogation program, as well as rare on-camera interview with former Egyptian detainee Abu Omar. Sponsored by the World Affairs Council. Co-sponsored by the Human Rights Center. November 7, 4 PM to 6 PM Peter Maass will discuss the difficulties reporters confront as they cover war crimes in the world’s conflict zones. Drawing on first-hand experience in the Middle East and the Balkans, Maass will describe his methods for dealing with wary soldiers and freelance insurgents. He will describe his efforts to chronicle the killings of civilians by American Marines during the Iraq invasion, as well as his detention by Serbian paramilitaries while looking for a secret prison camp in Bosnia. His talk will illuminate the realities of reporting in war zones where armies and insurgents alike often regard reporters as hostile partisans. Co-sponsored by International and Area Studies, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Peace and Conflict Studies, Graduate School of Journalism. November 7, 12:45 PM Dr. Gallimore joined the ICTR in January 2004. He is a certified mediator, facilitator, and third-party neutral in conflict resolution and also researches and writes on trauma healing, reconciliation, and violence prevention. He has served as a communications consultant and mass media trainer for international organizations including the United Nations Development Program for Women, USAID, and the Voice of America. With the Rwanda Rule of Law/USAID project, he was responsible for national communications and public opinion research about the post-genocide Gacaca community justice system. Dr. Gallimore is a faculty member of the University of Missouri International Center for Psychosocial Trauma. Co-sponsored by the Boalt Hall Committee for Human Rights and the Center for African Studies. November 27, 12 Noon As UN Advocacy Officer, Zach Vertin works on advocacy and policy issues across the UN system, with a particular focus on the Security Council. Vertin joined Crisis Group's New York office in January of 2007. He previously spent time doing advocacy work with the Kenya Human Rights Commission in Nairobi. Sponsored by the Institute of International Studies and the Human Rights Center. SEPTEMBER
September 24, 4 PM Dr. Svetlana Broz, granddaughter of Josip Broz Tito (President of Yugoslavia), is a cardiologist by training. When war broke out in Bosnia-Herzegovina she went to Bosnia to offer medical help. She found that war victims needed more than anything else to talk, and especially to bear witness about those who had defied ethnic politics to act as courageous human beings, to stand up against crimes being committed against the innocent even when they had no weapons to help them, and in many cases risking their own lives to save the life of another. She gathered their testimonies and published them in book form as Good People in an Evil Time. Inspired by these concrete instances of bravery, she compiled a handbook called Having What It Takes: Essays on Civil Courage, which defines the concept of civil courage and presents examples from conflict areas around the world. She has conducted workshops in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and has lectured worldwide on civil courage. Sponsored by the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. SPRING 2007 In March 2007, the Human Rights Center presented “Stopping Mass Atrocities: An International Conference on the Responsibility to Protect.” The conference was launched with a keynote address by Lt. General Roméo Dallaire, force commander of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide. It continued with a series of speeches and panel discussions, including remarks by the Hon. Gareth Evans, President of International Crisis Group, and Juan Méndez, President of the International Center for Transitional Justice. Visit the conference website for details and links to the webcasts. The conference was co-sponsored by Human Rights Watch and Genocide Intervention Network and was made possible by a grant from Humanity United. As follow-up to the conference, the Human Rights Center led a research project resulting in the report "The Responsibility to Protect (R2P): Moving the Campaign Forward," published in October 2007. 2001 A 2001 conference on “DNA and Human Rights” brought together researchers, practitioners and activists from the fields of genetics, biotechnology, forensic sciences, criminal law, human rights and ethics to discuss the potential of DNA to address the extraordinary needs of victims of human rights violations. Visit the conference website to read more about the presentations and reports resulting from the event. 1997 Reporting from the Killing Fields: A Conference on Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity, and War (April 1997) addressed historical and legal perspectives of mass atrocities in the American West, Armenia, Southeast Asia, Yugoslavia, and Rwanda. The conference opened with an address by Justice Richard Goldstone, and included participation by legal experts and leading journalists. The conference was co-sponsored by the Graduate School of Journalism, the Institute of International Studies, and the School of Law.
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