New Tactics in Human Rights Online Diaglog on “Monitoring Accountability for Human Rights,” May 18 to 24, 2011

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New Tactics and its featured resource practitioners will hold an on-line dialogue on Front Line Watchdogs: Monitoring accountability for human rights from May 18 to 24, 2011.

Front line watchdogs come in all shapes and sizes. They can be seen in courtrooms ensuring fair trials, accompanying threatened human rights defenders, holding vigil outside police stations to prevent torture, protecting election ballot results, testing for discrimination, monitoring development aid projects, investigating toxic waste from companies, etc., etc. While government bodies and corporations are often expected to monitor and regulate themselves, self-regulation does not always successfully uphold rights. Front line watchdogs take on this important citizen role of holding communities, government and corporations accountable.

Watchdog monitoring provides an opportunity to analyze, understand and influence abusive systems of power and to engage community members in human rights work.

In this dialogue, we will explore successful front line watchdog tactics, discuss lessons learned, challenges and opportunities for practitioners to adapt these tactics for their own issues and communities.

For information on how to participate, visit: http://www.newtactics.org/en/dialogue/front-line-watchdogs

New Source for Info on Human Rights Books

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The editors of the “New Books Network” (http://newbooksnetwork.com) are seeking one or more hosts for a new channel, “New Books in Human Rights” (http://newbooksinhumanrights.com). The channel will feature regular podcast interviews with authors of new books on human rights, conflict resolution, genocide studies, and peace studies.

The “New Books Network” is a not-for-profit consortium of academic podcasts aimed at disseminating discipline-specific information about new books to wide audiences.

2011 Raymond & Beverly Sackler Distinguished Lecture in Human Rights

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Please join us for the 2011 Raymond and Beverly Sackler Distinguished Lecture in Human Rights.


“International Justice, Transitional Justice: What Have We Learned about What ‘Works’?”
Diane Orentlicher
Deputy, Office of War Crimes Issues, U.S. Department of State
Thursday, April 21 4:00 PM
Konover Auditorium, Dodd Research Center

Diane F. Orentlicher is serving as Deputy, Office of War Crimes Issues, in the Department of State while on leave from American University’s Washington College of Law, where she is a Professor of International Law. She has served in her current position, on appointment by Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton, since October, 2009. The Office of War Crimes Issues advises the Secretary of State and formulates U.S. policy responses to atrocities committed in areas of conflict and elsewhere throughout the world.

Described by the Washington Diplomat as “one of the world’s leading authorities on human rights law and war crimes tribunals,” Professor Orentlicher has previously served in various public positions, including Special Advisor to the High Commissioner on National Minorities of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

Professor Orentlicher is also co-director (on leave) of the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law of American University. From 1995 to 2004, she served as founding director of the law school’s War Crimes Research Office, which provides legal assistance to international criminal tribunals and courts established jointly by the United Nations and national governments. Professor Orentlicher has presented congressional testimony on a range of issues of international criminal law, including U.S. legislation on genocide.

Testimony, Oral History, and Human Rights Documentation Conference: March 24-25, 2011

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Testimony, Oral History, and Human Rights Documentation:
A Conference Workshop at the University of Connecticut

Sponsored by the Human Rights Institute and the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center

Thursday, March 24 – Friday, March 25, 2011
Homer Babbidge Library, University of Connecticut, Storrs

Flame outside the Kigali Memorial Center, Kigali, Rwanda. Photograph by Valerie Love, 2009.

The first day of the conference will consist of a day-long workshop for academics and practitioners currently engaged in oral history work on human rights themes. 

On the second day, selected participants will present their work to a larger audience of students, faculty, librarians, and interested members of the public.  (Non-UConn affiliated attendees are requested to register.)  The Thursday workshop is now full, but space is available for the Friday sessions.

Schedule for Public Presentations on Friday, March 25, 2011:

9:30 – 10:00 AM:  Tea and continental breakfast

10:00 – 10:05 AM:  Welcome: Valerie Love, Curator for Human Rights and Alternative Press Collections, University of Connecticut

10:05- 10:10 AM: Opening: Bruce Stave, Director, Oral History Office, University of Connecticut

10:10 – 11:00 AM: Presentation by Mary Marshall Clark, Director of the Oral History Research Office at Columbia University, and co-founder of the of the September 11, 2001 Oral History Narrative and Memory Project

11:00 AM – 12:00 PM: Presentation by Daniel Rothenberg, Professor of Practice and Executive Director, Center for Law and Global Affairs, Arizona State University, and former head of the Iraq History Project, which collected over 8,000 testimonies from Iraqis following the US invasion  

12:00-1:00 PM:  Lunch Break

1:00- 1:45 P.M: Presentation by Lee Ann De Reus, Associate Professor of Women’s Studies at Penn State Altoona, and 2009 Carl Wilkens Fellow with Genocide Intervention Network, who has interviewed women survivors of rape in Chad and the Democratic Republic of the Congo

1:45-2:30 P.M: Presentation by Socheata Poeuv, Founder, Khmer Legacies, which documents stories from the Cambodian genocide

2:45- 3:15 P.M: Closing: Emma Gilligan, Professor of History and Human Rights, University of Connecticut

More information is available on the Dodd Research Center’s website.

December 10- Human Rights Day

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Human Rights Day 2010 on 10 December recognizes the work of human rights defenders worldwide who act to end discrimination.  The day commemorates the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948.

Acting alone or in groups within their communities, every day human rights defenders work to end discrimination by campaigning for equitable and effective laws, reporting and investigating human rights violations and supporting victims.

While some human rights defenders are internationally renowned, many remain anonymous and undertake their work often at great personal risk to themselves and their families.

The UN Human Rights Day 2010 website has profiles of some human rights defenders working around the world to end discrimination, including:

Courageously combating discrimination against homosexuals: Otgonbaatar Tsedendemberel (Mongolia)

Mr. Tsedendemberel is the Advocacy Programme Manager for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Centre based in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. The LGBT Centre is the first-ever Mongolian non-governmental organization mandated to uphold, protect and ensure the human rights of sexual minorities. The Centre submitted a report on LGBT rights in Mongolia to the UN’s Human Rights Council in 2010, risking their personal safety to do so. When Mongolia was reviewed by the Council’s Universal Periodic Review process in November 2010, Mr. Tsedendemberel traveled to Geneva to conduct advocacy and to “make sure the often suppressed voices of the Mongolian LGBT community were heard at the United Nations.”

Speaking out for indigenous rights: Dora Alonso (Guatemala)

Eighteen-year-old Dora Alonso is from Guatemala’s vast Mayan indigenous community and raises her voice against discrimination towards all indigenous people, in particular women and girls. She is a member of Guatemala’s Children’s Parliament, a national organization for Mayan, Xinca, Garifuna and Ladino children and youth. The Parliament’s work focuses on the promotion of health, education, gender equality, respect for identity and the prevention of sexual exploitation and child abuse. The Parliament also promotes non-discrimination of people living with HIV/AIDS. In her own role, Dora is responsible for the Parliament’s communications arm, providing information about the organization and implementing prevention campaigns.

Documenting human rights violations around the world: Roberto Garretón (Chile)

During the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, Mr. Garretón was arrested for publishing an article on human rights violations by the regime. He was a member of the Vicaría de la Solidaridad, an organization symbolic of the struggle for human rights, which spoke out against repression under Pinochet, defended the rights of torture victims and prisoners and sought to locate the disappeared. Mr. Garretón’s personal background lends itself to his work as a human rights lawyer and his current role as a member of the UN’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, which considers petitions from individuals or groups concerning cases of arbitrary deprivation of liberty. From 1994 to 2001, Mr. Garretón also served as the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, documenting human rights violations in that country.

Using the law to combat racial and other discrimination: Gay McDougall (USA)

Currently serving as the first United Nations Independent Expert on minority issues, Ms. Gay McDougall is a human rights lawyer with a long history of activism in civil rights. Growing up in segregated Atlanta, Georgia, Ms. McDougall was excluded from many public places as a child. She was the first black student admitted to her college and faced discrimination and racism on a daily basis. She went on to become Executive Director of the US-based international non-governmental organisation Global Rights between 1994 and 2006. Among her many international roles, she has served as an Independent Expert on the UN treaty body that oversees the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and was one of five international members of South Africa’s Independent Electoral Commission, which successfully organized and administered that country’s first non-racial elections.

Breaking a vicious cycle of discrimination against Roma communities: Sri Kumar Vishwanathan (India/Czech Republic)

Mr. Sri Kumar Vishwanathan, originally from India, has been a human rights defender of the Roma for 14 years. He has worked tirelessly to build bridges between Roma and non-Roma communities and his leadership and initiative led to the creation of the Common Life Village in Ostrava, Czech Republic, where families of both Roma and non-Roma ethnicities live together as a single community. He has also established dialogue between the Roma and the police forces, starting a project where Roma women work as assistants (inter-cultural mediators) with the police to help break the vicious cycle of exploitation of Roma families by thugs from their own community. He has also been consistently involved in providing assistance to Roma families who have been victims of brutal racist attacks. He still lives with his family in one of the most repressed Roma ghettos.

Providing hope and inspiration to HIV positive patients: Me Maphallang Ponoane (Lesotho)

Ms. Me Maphallang Ponoane has experienced firsthand the high levels of stigma and discrimination against people living with HIV and AIDS. As a widow and mother of four children living in Lesotho, southern Africa, she bravely decided to disclose her HIV status to her family, community and her entire district. In 2004, after recovering from a long HIV/AIDS-related illness, Ms. Ponoane joined a support group in her district. The group is now mandated to mobilize communities against stigma and discrimination and to provide care and support for members. Ms. Ponoane works as an “expert patient” and lay counselor in the government hospital in Quthing, promoting positive living for both HIV-positive and tuberculosis patients.

More stories of human rights defenders can be found on the Human Rights Day website.

2010 UConn Democracy Dialogue with Raj Patel

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Please join us for the 2010 UConn Democracy Dialogue at Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts on Monday, Nov. 15 at 7 pm. 

Author and activist, Raj Patel will speak at UConn on November 15.

For information and library and other local resources on food security and food politics in conjunction with the event, please visit http://classguides.lib.uconn.edu/rajpatel. 

Stuffed & Starved – The Value of Food in the World Today
Lecture by author and activist, Raj Patel
Part of the UConn Democracy Dialogue Series

Monday, November 15, 2010
7pm
Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts
Free with UConn ID, but monetary donations accepted for the Covenant Soup Kitchen in Willimantic, CT

Half the world is grossly overfed; half of it is starving. Food policy expert, journalist, activist, and author of the international bestseller Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System, Raj Patel traces the causes of this crisis from farm to fork, revealing a greatly flawed food system dominated by a few, powerful, major corporations. Ultimately, it is the power of these modern food giants influencing the environmental, social, and economic factors that determines how food ends up on tables throughout the world.

Educated at Oxford and Cornell, Raj Patel has worked for prestigious international organizations including the World Bank and WTO as well as for regional groups like the Land Research Action Network and the Southern and Eastern African Trade Information and Negotiations Institute.

For his harsh criticism of global corporate methods, Patel has been tear-gassed on four continents. His thoughts on food, hunger and globalization have appeared both in scholarly journals and in such major news sources as the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, Newsweek, NBC’s The Today Show, the BBC, and NPR. He recently returned from working in South Africa and is currently a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. His appearance at UConn is open to the public with a $5 donation to the Covenant Soup Kitchen in Willimantic, CT.

A Bit of Queer History for National Coming Out Day

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The idea for National Coming Out Day was proposed by Rob Eichber and Jean O’Leary, who was then head of the organization National Gay Rights Advocates.   The date, October 11, was chosen to commemorate the March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, held on October 11, 1987.   A few months later, a group of over 100  lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) activists from around the country gathered in Manassas, Va., about 25 miles outside Washington, D.C.  Recognizing that the LGBT community often reacted defensively to anti-gay actions, they came up with the idea of a national day to celebrate visibility and coming out.

But even before National Coming Out Day was created over 20 years ago, there was a long history of LGBT activism and movements to increase the visibility of gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender, and queer individuals (and far more identities beyond just those I’ve listed here as well!)  While visibility of the LGBT community in society is increasing, visibility of LGBT history is unfortunately not.  Bayard Rustin should be a household name.  While the Stonewall Riots are generally lauded as the birth of the gay rights movement, fewer know of the riots at Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco in August 1966, or that the first recorded queer sit- in actually took place in 1965 at Dewey’s, a coffee shop and lunch counter in Philadelphia:

 According to an article by Doug Ireland from In These Times,  

“The establishment began refusing service to this LGBT clientele, prompting a protest rally on April 25, 1965. Dewey’s management turned away more than 150 patrons while the demonstration went on outside. Four teens resisted efforts to force them out and were arrested and later convicted of disorderly conduct. In the ensuing weeks, Dewey’s patrons and others from Philadelphia’s gay community set up an informational picket line protesting the lunch counter’s treatment of gender-variant youth. On May 2, activists staged another sit-in, and the police were again called, but this time made no arrests. The restaurant backed down, and promised “an immediate cessation of all indiscriminate denials of service.”

Unfortunately, violence against the LGBT community continues in the present day.  The 2010 gay pride parade in Belgrade, Serbia was marred by violence between police and protestors.  And in the United States, far too many gay teens have committed suicide in the past month as a result of continued bullying and harassment in schools. Sex columnist Dan Savage has launched a new advocacy campaign on YouTube called “It Gets Better,” in order to give hope to gay teens who are experiencing harassment and bullying.

From his column explaining the project:

“Billy Lucas was just 15 when he hanged himself in a barn on his grandmother’s property. He reportedly endured intense bullying at the hands of his classmates—classmates who called him a fag and told him to kill himself. His mother found his body.   Nine out of 10 gay teenagers experience bullying and harassment at school, and gay teens are four times likelier to attempt suicide. Many LGBT kids who do kill themselves live in rural areas, exurbs, and suburban areas, places with no gay organizations or services for queer kids.  “My heart breaks for the pain and torment you went through, Billy Lucas,” a reader wrote after I posted about Billy Lucas to my blog. “I wish I could have told you that things get better.”   I had the same reaction: I wish I could have talked to this kid for five minutes. I wish I could have told Billy that it gets better. I wish I could have told him that, however bad things were, however isolated and alone he was, it gets better.

But gay adults aren’t allowed to talk to these kids. Schools and churches don’t bring us in to talk to teenagers who are being bullied. Many of these kids have homophobic parents who believe that they can prevent their gay children from growing up to be gay—or from ever coming out—by depriving them of information, resources, and positive role models.”

Nor is gay history taught in the majority of schools.  As the postcard puts it, “History has set the record a little too straight.”   For the most part, students aren’t taught that so many authors, artists, engineers, doctors, politicians, and visionaries in our society that played HUGE roles in history, both in the US and around the world, were gay.  And the only gay people we do hear about in history seem to always be the ones who died, such as Harvey Milk, or in relation to the AIDS crisis.   

As State Senator Sheila Kuehl pointed out in 2006 regarding textbooks in California, “According to the textbooks now, no gay person ever made any contribution to anything in California.”

With so much left out of textbooks and the curriculum, even in higher education, archival resources play an invaluable role in uncovering hidden histories.  The Dodd Research Center has a large collection of materials documenting gay and lesbian history in the United States.  The LGBT Studies Subject Guide has information on finding archival sources both at UConn as well as a list of repositories around the country with significant LGBT history collections.  So please do come to the archives, and discover the richness of LGBT history!

A poster announces a “Gay In” in Central Park in New York City, as part of Gay and Lesbian Pride events in 1978. Poster from the Alternative Press Collection at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut. Not to be copied or reproduced without permission.

The Activist Archivist

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Grace Lile at WITNESS has written a great post on their blog about Activism and Archives.  It’s definitely worth a read.

From the post:

In 1970, at the annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists, gadfly historian Howard Zinn gave a seminal speech* in which he challenged one of the core foundational principles upon which modern archives practice was built, that of neutrality.  The whole notion, said Zinn, was a “fake,” a cop-out, a dangerously passive avoidance of the inherently political nature of the archival endeavor.  Neutrality allowed the archivist to perpetuate the status quo, to reflect and reinforce society’s economic and political disparities, and to preserve the interests of the rich, powerful, literate, or otherwise privileged, at the expense of the less so.

“The existence, preservation, and availability of archives, documents and records in our society are very much determined by the distribution of wealth and power.  That is, the most powerful, the richest elements in society have the greatest capacity to find documents, preserve them, and decide what is or is not available to the public.  This means that government, business, and the military are dominant.”

Zinn challenged his audience to question their own unwitting acquiescence to entrenched power, to campaign against government secrecy, and to acknowledge and confront the societal biases that ignore the marginal, the poor, the non-literate, and even the ordinary; in essence, to embrace an activist rather than passive mindset.

This generated a considerable amount of controversy at the time, but in the 40 years since, numerous writers and participants in archival discourse have invoked the word activist in calling for new approaches to a range of archival concepts and practices, including ownership, diversity, non-textual cultural heritage, information rights, community archives, the definition of the record, user participation, ethical codes, and the responsibilities of the archivist.  Author and former SAA President Rand Jimerson wrote:

“Archivists should use their power—in determining what records will be preserved for future generations and in interpreting this documentation for researchers—for the benefit of all members of society. By adopting a social conscience for the profession, they can commit themselves to active engagement in the public arena. Archivists can use the power of archives to promote accountability, open government, diversity, and social justice. In doing so, it is essential to distinguish objectivity from neutrality. Advocacy and activism can address social issues without abandoning professional standards of fairness, honesty, detachment, and transparency.” [emphasis mine]

Read the rest over at the WITNESS blog:  http://blog.witness.org/

International Day of Peace Events, September 21, 2010

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The UConn Honors Council is organizing a screening of the documentary, “The Day After Peace,” which chronicles Jeremy Gilley’s 10-year journey to establish an annual Peace Day on September 21, and his attempts to convince countries around the world to recognize the day with nonviolence and ceasefires in their conflicts.

Screening of “The Day After Peace”

11:30 AM,

Class of 1947 Room

Homer Babbidge Library

Refreshments will be served.

The International Day of Peace was envisioned as a day of global ceasefire and non-violence, an invitation to all nations and people to honour a cessation of hostilities.

The UN website for the International Day of Peace has information about peacebuilding events and news, and ways you can get involved.

Human Rights Education Associates (HREA) has a resource guide for the International Day of Peace, with links and learning materials for educators and students. 

Peace One Day, created by filmmaker Jeremy Gilley, is also celebrating the day, with ways you can take action, and information about his documentary film, The Day After Peace. 

In the words of Albert Einstein, ”Peace cannot be kept by force.  It can only be acheived by understanding.”

Lecture and Performance by Cambodian American rapper, praCh

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Album cover by praCh, who will be performing at the Dodd Research Center on September 16 at 4 pm.

The Cambodian American rapper praCh will be giving a lecture and performance at the Dodd Center on Thursday, September 16 at 4 pm in Konover Auditorium. 

Named by Newsweek as the “pioneer of Khmer Rap” and the “first Cambodian rap star” praCh first received international acclaim with his debut hip hop album, Dalama…The End’n is Just the Beginnin’ (2000). Over the course of a decade, he has emerged as a multimedia force, releasing two sequels to Dalama, in 2003 and 2010. Currently the CEO of Mujestic Records, praCh has been featured in international media outlets, including Cambodia Daily, Phnom Penh Post, Time Magazine, ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN, NBC, FOX, PBS, Press-Telegram, LA Times, Hmong Times, OC Weekly, 562 Magazine, Asia Week, and Khmerconnection.com.

Born in the farmlands of Cambodia but raised on the mean streets of America, praCh is a committed transnational activist. He battles oppression via rhyme and lyrics, and by example, and makes clear the reasons why hip hop is global and will continue to matter.

For more information, go to the Asian American Studies Institute website.