Previous Events
The following is a list of previous HRP-sponsored or co-sponsored events for the 2009-2010 Academic Year. For more information on these events, please click on the following links or contact the HRP office at hrp@law.harvard.edu.
Children and Transitional Justice
Related Links:Millennium Development Goals and Human Rights
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You're Not Universal and Stop Whining About it: Sexuality and the Limits of Human Rights
This event featured Scott Long, Director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights Program at Human Rights Watch. Mr. Long has documented and
advocated against human rights violations based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and HIV status. He has also lobbied the United Nations on sexual rights issues; his work led to U.N. human rights mechanisms agreeing publicly for the first time to take up gay and lesbian concerns. He is the researcher and author of Public Scandals: Sexual Orientation and Criminal Law in Romania, a report by Human Rights Watch and IGLHRC, and of More than a Name: State-Sponsored Homophobia and Its Consequences in Southern Africa, also for Human Rights Watch and IGLHRC. Related Links:
Invisible Citizens: The Bedouin of the Negev
This panel presentation featured Yeela Raanan, Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages; college professor in the Negev; Khalil Alumur, Representative of the local committee in Alsirri Village, an unrecognized village in the Negev; and Ahmad Amara (Moderator), Global Advocacy Fellow and Clinical Instructor with the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School.
Building a New House: Women, the UN and Gender Architecture
This event featured Cynthia Rothschild, a former Senior Policy Advisor with the Center for Women's Global Leadership at Rutgers University. Ms. Rothschild's talk focused on how the UN should move toward becoming a better resourced agency on gender equality and women's empowerment, especially as 2010 marks the 15th anniversary of the historic UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.
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Exploring Social RightsThis panel presentation coincided with the launch of "Exploring Social Rights," a book edited by Aeyal Gross and Daphne Barak-Erez from Hart Publishing. The book, which features contributions from Lucie White, Frank Michelman and more, looks into the theoretical and practical implications of social rights.
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State, Churches and Freedom of Conscience: Why the French Laicite is Liberal
This event featured Professor Patrick Weil, a Visiting Professor of Law and Robina Foundation International Fellow at Yale Law School and Director of the Center for the Study of Immigration, Integration and Citizenship Policies at the University of Paris, Pantheon-Sorbonne. Professor Weil's article, Why the French Laicite is Liberal, was published in a 2009 issue of the Cardozo Law Review.
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Human Rights Diplomacy: An Oxymoron?Sponsored by the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School, the International Legal Studies, and the University Committee for Human Rights Studies, this featured Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Judge Pillay was an attorney and conveyancer of the High Court of South Africa from 1967 to 1995, and was appointed acting judge of the High Court in 1995. In 1967, she became the first woman to start a law practice in South Africa's Natal Province, providing legal defence for opponents of apartheid. She exposed the practice and effects of torture and solitary confinement on detainees held in police custody, and successfully established the rights of prisoners on Robben Island.
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The Unheard Truth: Poverty and Human RightsIn our rapidly globalizing age with economic growth occurring in almost every corner of the world, it is easy to forget that more than one billion people still live on less than one dollar a day. Poverty is the worst human-rights crisis in the world today, denying billions of people their most basic rights. At this event, Amnesty International Secretary General Irene Khan made the case that poverty remains a global epidemic because we continue to define it as an economic problem whose only solution is foreign aid and investment. Khan called for a reevaluation of this assumption and turned us toward confronting poverty as a human-rights violation. Empowering the poor with basic rights of security, Khan argued, is our only chance for eradicating poverty and giving freedom and dignity to those who have never experienced it.
Related Links:
- The Unheard Truth: Poverty and Human Rights (official Web site)
- Amnesty International
Litigating the Right to Water in South Africa: The Mazibuko CaseSponsored by International Legal Studies and the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School, this event featured a presentation by Professor Jackie Dugard of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. Professor Dugard spoke about the development and litigation of South Africa's first explicit right to water case, as well as the role of litigation in attempting to advance socio-economic equality.
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Reproductive Rights and the Right to InformationThis event addressed the role that access to information for marginalized women plays in their reproductive health and lives, looking at how this issue impacts poor women, women of color, and adolescents among other populations. The event also explored regulations and rights in the context of the provision of reproductive health care services, honing in on the informational transaction between patient and provider.
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Engaging a Pariah: How the ILO Used International Law to Tackle Forced Labor in BurmaThis event featured a presentation by Richard Horsey, the former International Labor Organization (ILO) representative in Burma. As the ILO representative in Rangoon, Horsey helped develop and implement the organization's strategy of engaging with the government while applying various forms of pressure, including the use of international law. These efforts eventually compelled the Burmese regime to take significant steps to outlaw, deter, and prosecute forced labor crimes.
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International Criminal Justice: Challenges of Investigating and Prosecuting War CrimesSponsored by the OPIA, the Human Rights Program and the War Crimes Clinic, this event featured Serge Brammertz, the Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Mr. Brammertz spoke about his experiences as Prosecutor for the ICTY, Commissioner of the United Nations International Independent Investigation Commission, Deputy Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, and head of the Federal Prosecution of the Kingdom of Belgium.
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Prosecuting Heads of StateThis event featured a presentation from Ellen Lutz, Executive Director of Cultural Survival and the co-editor of the 2009 book, Prosecuting Heads of State, on the era of accountability for former government officials and heads of state who had committed human rights abuses and other abuses of power while in office. In the past 20 years, at least 67 former heads of state have been prosecuted for serious human rights violations or economic crimes committed during their administration. Lutz analyzed the reasons for this era of accountability, examining the use of criminal trials as a means of achieving justice for serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law.
Related Links:
- Cultural Survival
- Cambridge University Press listing for Prosecuting Heads of State
Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives on National Human Rights Institutions, State Compliance and Social Change
By bridging legal scholarship with social science concerns of political contestation and norm creation and diffusion, this workshop provided a platform for making inter-disciplinary knowledge available to a wider community of scholars and practitioners. Situating the work of national human rights institutions or ‘NHRIs’ within the framework of state compliance and social change, this workshop responded to a number of converging developments as human rights advocates turn their attention away from an increasingly ambitious and sophisticated international human rights normative framework toward its effective implementation at the national level.
Related Links: - Participant Profiles
- Paper Abstracts