Red Ribbon Award Community Dialogue Session at the XVIII International AIDS Conference

Protecting Yourself and Promoting Your Cause: International Human Rights Mechanisms and Government Accountability for Human Rights Violations 

All States are bound to respect, protect, and promote international human rights. This 90-minute workshop will provide participants with concrete tools, litigation strategies, and advocacy materials for holding States accountable at the international level, including at the United Nations.  During this interactive session, human rights lawyers and clinicians will offer practical advice and provide concrete examples to demonstrate how grassroots activists can engage international human rights mechanisms to promote and enhance their work.

Leitner Center staff will cover topics:

• What international mechanisms are available to groups like mine?
• How can I use them to bring my work to the attention of the international community?
• How can I access these UN mechanisms from my country?
• What can they do to support our work?
• What kind of information do I need to provide to them?
• How can I use these mechanisms as a part of my advocacy strategy?
• Where can I find more information about human rights accountability?
• Who can I turn to for help in accessing these international mechanisms?

Our speaker at this week's Brown Bag Lunch is Lisa Davis.  Ms Davis, an international human rights attorney, received her J.D. from CUNY Law School, where she was Editor-in-Chief of the New York City Law Review, and her M.A. in International Policy from American University.  For the last seven years, she has worked as a women's human rights advocate and consultant and has written extensively on international women's human rights issues.

MADRE works to communicate the impacts of policies of governments, international financial institutions, and other centers of power on women and their communities worldwide and to formulate and press for alternatives to destructive policies.  The group brings women who work for social change at the community level into the process of creating and monitoring international law by offering training and opportunities for women to advocate for their rights in local, national, and international arenas.  These trainings enable women to infuse local human rights struggles with the power of international law and hold their governments accountable to international human rights standards.   In addition, the participation of community-based women's human rights activists in the international arena ensures that the perspectives and needs of historically marginalized women are incorporated into international laws and processes.

Executive Director Christina Storm reflects on the path she took from seasoned trial lawyer and law firm partner to founder of one of the world's largest international pro bono service organizations. Searching for a way to use her legal skills to advance human rights, Ms. Storm discovered that there was no organization to connect lawyers with international pro bono work. She filled this gap by founding Lawyers Without Borders in 2000. Progressing from a home office to a staff of lawyers, interns, and numerous in-house volunteers, Ms. Storm and her colleagues have constructed an organization that has managed, framed, and met the legal profession's need to give back. In 2006, Ms. Storm was recognized as one of Connecticut's "Super Lawyers" in International Law and was also awarded the Otto Walter Alumni Award in International Law from New York Law School.

Lawyers Without Borders is a not-for-profit organization founded in 2000, whose mission is to protect the integrity of the legal process, serve the under-served, strengthen the rule of law, and promote the culture of pro bono service in the legal profession. it fulfills its mission through advocacy training, neutral observation, and engagement in programs that assist with capacity-building in developing and post-conflict regions. The group aims to link grassroots organizations in locations that are in need of legal assistance with pro bono counsel, while also acting as a vehicle for addressing human rights issues through sometimes traditional and, more often, innovative channels. The organization relies heavily on volunteer lawyers to offer legal services and operates in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, the Palestinian Territories, and throughout Africa.

Assistant Dean Toni M. Fine coordinates Fordham's international and non-JD programs and was involved in Lawyers Without Borders from its inception. She received her law degree from Duke University and previously served as Director of Graduate and International Programs at the Benjamin M. Cardozo School of Law and Assistant Director of the Global Law School Program at NYU School of Law. She frequently teaches and lectures abroad.

Pizza will be served.

Please join the Leitner Center in welcoming Jamil Dakwar, head of the Human Rights Program at the ACLU.

In December 2008, the Campaign for a New Domestic Human Rights Agenda emerged from a coalition of US-based social justice organizations, including major human rights, civil rights, civil liberties, and economic justice groups interested in taking advantage of the new political climate. Currently comprised of more than fifty domestic organizations, the Campaign advocates for more effective human rights protections and a strengthened US commitment to human rights at home and abroad based on the Blueprint ACS report authored by Fordham Law School Professor Catherine Powell.

The key objectives of the Campaign include influencing policy at the federal, state, and local levels by (1) revitalizing the Interagency Working Group on Human Rights to coordinate the efforts of federal agencies and departments to promote and respect human rights and to implement human rights obligations as US domestic policy, (2) transforming the US Commission on Civil Rights into a US Commission on Civil and Human Rights, (3) monitoring government compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which the US has ratified, and (4) strengthening federal, state, and local government coordination to support human rights.

January 2010 marked the end of President Obama’s first year in office.  Campaign Steering Committee member and Director of ACLU human rights program Jamil Dakwar will discuss both the Campaign's ongoing efforts to secure meaningful human rights protections and the work that remains to be done in the coming year.

Speaker:

Jamil Dakwar is Director of the ACLU's Human Rights Program (HRP) which is dedicated to holding the US government accountable to its international human rights obligations and commitments. HRP uses human rights strategies to complement existing ACLU legal and legislative advocacy and to advance social justice in the areas of national security, immigrants' rights, women's rights, racial justice, death penalty, and children’s rights. HRP conducts human rights education and training sessions, and engages in advocacy and litigation before US courts and international bodies, including the United Nations and regional human rights mechanisms such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

Prior to joining the ACLU, Mr. Dakwar worked at Human Rights Watch, where he conducted research and published reports on issues of torture and detention in the Middle East. Before coming to the United States, he was a senior attorney with Adalah, a leading human rights group in Israel, where he filed and argued human rights cases before the Israeli Supreme Court. He is co-chair of the American Constitution Society's Working Group on International Law and the Constitution, which focuses on the relationship between international law and the Constitution and the implications of this relationship for human rights. He is also a steering committee member of the Campaign for New Domestic Human Rights Agenda.

Eileen de Ravin manages the Equator Initiative, a multi-partner effort within the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) that aims to foster successful community initiatives in the Equatorial belt which attempt to reduce poverty through the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. Ms. de Ravin will discuss the Equator Prize and Red Ribbon Award--awards that attempt to promote indigenous efforts to address sustainable development and HIV/AIDS issues, respectively, in local communities. She will also discuss what success looks like on the ground in these different communities.

Ms. de Ravin is the manager of the Equator Initiative in the Environment & Energy Group (EEG) within UNDP's Bureau for Development Policy. She is currently engaged in developing UNDP's work on Local and Community Knowledge in partnership with the GEF Small Grants Programme as part of the Local Pillar within EEG, and serves on the Indigenous Peoples Liaison Committee in UNDP. Prior to joining UNDP in 2002, she worked in the non-governmental sector on sustainable development programs in India, focusing on environment and health. Earlier she was a nurse-midwife, practicing at inner-city hospitals in New York. She received her master's degree in Public Health in Population and Family Health from Columbia University, and has held clinical faculty positions at Columbia, addressing a range of environmental and development issues.

Pizza will be served.

Recent studies show that sexual violence against American Indian women in Indian Country occurs at rates more than twice that for non-Native women in the United States. Moreover, the maze of conflicting jurisdictional authority in Indian Country means that sexual violence against Indian women often goes unpunished. Non-Indian men constitute the overwhelming majority of perpetrators of sexual violence against Indian women but they rarely face prosecution by state or federal authorities, and they cannot be tried in tribal courts; in 1978, the U.S. Supreme Court held that inherent tribal sovereign authority did not embrace criminal authority over non-Indians. As a result, Indian women rarely "enjoy the full protection and guarantees against all forms of violence and discrimination" as articulated in the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

While the United States is not a signatory to this Declaration, Professor N. Bruce Duthu suggests that the existing sovereign-to-sovereign relationship and trust obligations between the federal government and Indian tribes obligates Congress, in conjunction with Indian tribes, to take measures to remedy this instance of "broken justice" in Indian Country. Duthu is Professor of Native American Studies at Dartmouth College and the author of AMERICAN INDIANS AND THE LAW (2008). He was formerly Professor of Law at Vermont Law School and is an enrolled member of the United Houma Nation of Louisiana.