Past Events

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Reimagining Gender Violence as Torture

Posted on January 1, 2023April 7, 2023 by Branzell, Alex

Is gender-based violence (GBV) different in any important way from what is understood as torture?
The participants in this forum, basing their arguments on decades of experience in law, clinical work, activism and scholarship, assert that understanding GBV as torture is essential for furthering public understanding of the true nature of GBV, and importantly, for improving the response and redress measures for victims.

This expert panel is one in a series of public engagements of the 2023 Gladstein Visiting Professor of Human Rights Rashida Manjoo, the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences.

Rashida Manjoo is Professor Emeritus at the University of Cape Town where she taught for many years in the Department of Public Law and also convened the LLM Human Rights Program. She continues to supervise PhD candidates in the Faculty of Law.

Professor Manjoo has over four decades of experience in social justice and human rights work both in South Africa and abroad. Until July 2015, she held the position of United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, its Causes and Consequences, a post she was appointed to in 2009 by the United Nations Human Rights Council. Her UN work over six years has included monitoring and reporting on States' compliance in responding to and preventing violence against women, its causes, and consequences, both generally and in different country contexts. She has particularly highlighted the interaction of interpersonal, communal, institutional, and structural factors that negatively impact the interdependence and indivisibility of the human rights of women, and the challenges of the normative gap in international law on the issue of violence against women.

Professor Manjoo is the former Parliamentary Commissioner of the Commission on Gender Equality, an institution created by the Constitution of South Africa, with a mandate to oversee the promotion and protection of gender equality and women's rights. She has also been involved in social context training for judges and lawyers, where she has designed both content and methodology.

She has authored several journal articles, book chapters and reports, including the co-edited books Women’s Charters and Declarations: Building another World; The Legal Protection of women from violence - normative gaps in international law; Criminal Justice and Accountability in Africa; and Violence against Women: Law, Policy, and Practice.

Rashida Manjoo is the 2023 Gladstein Visiting Professor of Human Rights at the University of Connecticut Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute.

Carla Ferstman joined Essex Law School in January 2018. She is a barrister and solicitor (British Columbia, 1994). DPhil (Public International Law) (Oxon); LL.M (NYU); LL.B (UBC); BA (Philosophy) (Western). She was Fernand Braudel Fellow (2022) at European University Institute (Florence); visiting professional (2015) at Centre for International Governance and Justice at RegNet, Australian National University (Canberra); and Jennings Randolph Senior Fellow (2012/13) at the United States Institute of Peace (Washington, DC).

Carla is a member since 2018 of the Council of Europe's Expert Council on NGO Law (a specialist body that provides commentary and expertise on the regulation of civil society activities throughout the Council of Europe). She is also on the JRR-UN Women SGBV Justice Experts Roster and on the Advisory Committee of Lawyers for Justice in Libya. She was a judge on the Aban Tribunal, an International ‘People’s Tribunal’ established to investigate atrocities alleged to have taken in place in Iran during the November 2019 protests, which held oral hearings in November 2021 and February 2022 and issued its final judgment in November 2022.

Carla has worked in the human rights field for the bulk of her career to date. After a brief period in private practice in Canada as a criminal defence lawyer, she began working internationally, first for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Rwanda and thereafter, at the International Secretariat of Amnesty International in London. She served as the Executive Legal Advisor of the Commission for Real Property Claims of Refugees and Displaced Persons in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1999-2001), a mass claims body established pursuant to the Dayton Peace Accords to re-establish property rights and assist displaced persons to return home. In 2001, she joined REDRESS, a nongovernmental human rights organization which pursues justice on behalf of victims of torture and related international crimes, first as Legal Director and from 2004 - 2018 as Director. During her tenure, REDRESS won the MacArthur Foundation Award for Creative and Effective Institutions.

In 2022, Carla won the Essex Faculty of Arts and Humanities Supervisor of the Year award.

David Richards is an Associate Professor at the University of Connecticut, with appointments in both the Department of Political Science and the Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute, where he is Director of Graduate Studies.

David’s body of work on human rights includes more than two-dozen studies of: gender-violence law, the measurement of government respect for human rights including torture, US public support for torture, and the effects of globalization on human rights respect, among others. He has also authored reports for governments and international organizations.

Some current projects include studies of: torture in the time of COVID; sexual violence as torture; school infrastructure as a children’s right; the language of torture in narratives; and best-practices in teaching college students about torture.

David Richards is likely best known as the co-founder/director of the now-archived Cingranelli-Richards (CIRI) Human Rights Data Project. Funded multiple times by the National Science Foundation and World Bank, among others, this project provided information on the level of government respect for 16 human rights in 196 countries from 1981 to 2012. The CIRI Project’s data have been used by international organizations such as the United Nations and World Bank, and in 170 countries by governments, media, activists, businesses, scholars, and students.

David’s book (with Jill Haglund, Univ. of Kentucky) Violence Against Women and the Law (Routledge 2015), examines the strength of laws addressing four types of violence against women–rape, marital rape, domestic violence, and sexual harassment–in 196 countries from 2007 to 2010. Of central importance is the question of why these laws exist in some places and not others, and why they are stronger or weaker in places where they do exist. The book’s original data allow the testing of various hypotheses related to whether international law drives the enactment of domestic legal protections. Also examined are the ways in which these legal protections are related to economic, political, and social institutions, and how transnational society affects the presence and strength of these laws.

Linda MacDonald and Jeanne Sarson are feminist human rights activists living in Nova Scotia, Canada. For 30 years they have focused their work on supporting women who detail being victimized by family and non-family-based non-State torturer-traffickers with organized criminal informal networks with like-minded others. As independent researchers and scholars with many published articles, book chapters, and their 2021 book, “Women Unsilenced: Our Refusal To Let Torturer-Traffickers Win,” which shares their developed theory, models, and non-State torture (NST) victimization-traumatization informed care, expanding this work to name the infliction of consequential conditioned suicide-femicide victimizations. Their participatory research represents the voices of women from Canada, the U.S., Mexico, the UK, Western Europe, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Papua New Guinea, plus women who identify torture victimizations in prostitution and pornographic exploitations. Since 2004 they have participated in non-governmental organizational panels at the United Nations in New York, Geneva, and in Vienna where they are involved in a Working Group addressing non-State torture (NST) to create global education with the aim to eliminate all forms of non-State torture of women and girls. They develop resources, provide educational presentations and webinars nationally and internationally, including in the UK, the U.S., Spain, Portugal, and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Rwanda’s Restorative Journey: Living Alongside Your Enemy

Posted on January 1, 2023January 25, 2023 by Branzell, Alex

Three days into the 1994 Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi, Carl and Teresa Wilkens made the heart wrenching decision that she would take their young children to safety, and he would stay at their home in Kigali and try to help. Neither had any idea that during the next 100 days more than a million people would be slaughtered, often by their neighbors.

Through the sharing of first-hand accounts of the catastrophic 1994 genocide and the country’s rebuilding journey that followed, Carl will discuss restorative justice and practices and engage us in guided conversations about what those practices mean today, particularly in the realm of rebuilding trust.

As a humanitarian aid worker, Carl Wilkens was one of two Americans who refused to leave Rwanda as thousands of expatriates and UN soldiers fled the country in the face of what is now known as the 1994 Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi. Working together with Rwandan colleagues they brought food, water, and medicine to orphans trapped around the city.

These days Wilkens travels around the globe using the transformative process of storytelling and restorative practices to explore topics such as polarization, harmful conflict, and belonging. He is the Co-founder and Director of World Outside My Shoes.

"I'm Not Leaving"

In advance of the event, we encourage you to watch the 40-minute documentary, I'm Not Leaving, available in full & free on YouTube.

This 40-minute documentary shares snapshots of the genocide through the eyes of Carl and his wife Teresa along with: Gasigwa, a courageous Rwandan colleague whose home became a safe-house, Laura from the US Embassy who wrestled with Washington, DC to not abandon their mission, and Phil, one of the handful of UN peacekeepers who volunteered to stay in Rwanda and were tenuously hanging on to save lives. Their gut-wrenching choices and unexpected alliances formed during the 100 days of slaughter leave us with a surprising sense of hope and agency.

Event Canceled: Women, Life, Freedom: Iran’s Uprising & the Power of Digital Media

Posted on November 1, 2022November 17, 2022 by Branzell, Alex

Human Rights Close to Home Youth Summit

Posted on November 1, 2022January 12, 2023 by Akaslan, Imge

We're pleased to announce the second annual Human Rights Close to Home Youth Summit! This one-day summit is designed by youth for youth and convenes young activists and allies from around Connecticut to learn and mobilize as a community. It will take place on January 11, 2023 at the University of Connecticut Storrs Campus.

The Youth Summit is part of Human Rights Close to Home (HRCH), which is an innovative three-year pilot program that aims to promote rights-based civic engagement by youth through human rights education.

We are offering Connecticut students an opportunity to participate in the Youth Summit, a major event within the Human Rights Close to Home initiative. This Youth Summit is created and led by the Human Rights Close to Home Youth Advisory team. This is a one-day educational space for young activists and allies from around CT to come together as a community.

In May 2022, we succeeded in gathering students from a diverse range of Connecticut high schools for an engaging day of hands-on workshops and guest speakers. Our goal was to provide powerful learning experiences that would enable and encourage attendees to take action for human rights back in their school communities.

Throughout the Youth Summit, students and educators will participate in workshops designed by youth and will interact with a wide range of speakers, from fellow youth activists to professional human rights advocates.

At this time, the Youth Summit is open only to Connecticut high school students and teachers. Please direct any questions to the HRCH Youth Advisory Team coordinators Chris Buckley, Sian Charles-Harris, and Jake Skrzypiec.

Human Rights Close to Home (HRCH) engages educators and youth in the development and implementation of human rights education for civic action. We empower teachers with the knowledge, skills, values, and relationships to become expert human rights and civics educators. We foster youth leadership through experiential learning opportunities that have a direct impact on our youth and their communities.

Human Rights Close to Home is a program of Dodd Impact, a part of the Human Rights Institute at UConn.

Event Canceled: Women, Life, Freedom: Iran’s Uprising & the Power of Digital Media

Posted on November 1, 2022November 17, 2022 by Branzell, Alex

Ordinary Curators at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Posted on November 1, 2022December 1, 2022 by Branzell, Alex

This talk will draw on a companion article to Christine Sylvester's recent book Curating and Re-Curating the American War in Vietnam and Iraq (Oxford, 2019). Published in the International Relations journal Security Dialogue, “Curating and Re-Curating the American War in Vietnam” (2018) explores the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington as a "museum" site where "ordinary curators" authorize themselves to re-curate the war to put mortality --not state, honor or soldier heroism –at the heart of it. The piece mixes elements of new museum thinking with consideration of object assemblages composed and left at the Memorial, as well as the personal memories Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk curates into a museum to lost love in his novel The Museum of Innocence (2008). It challenges a field known for abstract theory to humanize its knowledge base by noticing ordinary civilians re-curating inherited versions of war.

Christine Sylvester is sole author of 7 books on International Relations, among them Art/Museums: International Relations Where We Least Expect It (Routledge), Feminist International Relations: An Unfinished Journey (Cambridge) and Producing Women and Progress in Zimbabwe (Heinemann). She has held the Swedish Research Council’s Kerstin Hesselgren Professorship, a Leverhulme fellowship at SOAS University of London, and was an Eminent Scholar of the Feminist Theory and Gender Studies Section of the International Studies Association. She was named one of Fifty Key Thinkers in International Relations (Griffiths, Roach, Solomon), and today’s article was among 20 pieces recognized for pushing academic boundaries of security thinking over the 50-year history of Security Dialogue (M. Murphy, 2020).

Civic Engagement: Our Collective Responsibility to Participate in Democracy

Posted on November 1, 2022December 9, 2022 by Branzell, Alex

In a time of unprecedented partisanship and political divisiveness, what role do we all as individuals play in fostering/cultivating a robust democracy with respect for human rights? Join us to consider these and other questions about the central role of civic engagement in the United States today.

Opening remarks will be delivered by former Senator Chris Dodd. Special guest Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut will be joining us from Washington. Professor and President Emeritus Susan Herbst will serve as moderator.

This discussion is made possible by Travelers.

Christopher J. Dodd represented Connecticut in the United States Congress for 36 years – three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and five terms in the U.S. Senate. Senator Dodd was a widely respected legislator and a key participant in nearly every major national policy debate over his four decades of public service. He authored or co-authored major legislation in the areas of education, health, financial services, foreign policy, and election reform.

Chris Murphy, United States Senator for Connecticut, has dedicated his career to public service as an advocate for Connecticut families. Senator Murphy has been a strong voice in the Senate fighting for affordable health care, sensible gun laws and a forward-looking foreign policy. As a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, he has been an outspoken proponent of diplomacy, international human rights and the need for clear-eyed American leadership abroad. Murphy currently serves as the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Near East, South Asia, Central Asia and Counterterrorism.

Community Dialogue on Solar Energy & Electro-Mobility: Opportunities & Challenges for a Just Energy Transition in Connecticut

Posted on November 1, 2022November 23, 2022 by Branzell, Alex

Clean energy has become one of the key strategies to mitigate and reduce the effects of climate change, reduce oil dependency, improve the quality of our environment, and reduce household expenses on energy. However, the benefits from energy production and distribution have not been equally experienced by all communities. And the negative social and environmental consequences have not been equally shouldered. The clean energy transition may be an opportunity to redress some of those inequalities.

Please join us for an event aimed at fostering dialogue among community representatives, researchers, and policymakers interested in the equity implications of solar energy and electric mobility. Together, we’ll explore the sustainability and human rights challenges and opportunities that the clean energy revolution might bring to these sectors. We’ll focus, in particular, on the situation of historically underserved communities in Connecticut.

Faculty members from the University of Connecticut’s School of Engineering and Human Rights Institute will share their research and all participants will engage in active discussion. In-person and hybrid options for participation are available.

A collaborative venture between the Human Rights Institute and UConn’s School of Engineering, the Engineering for Human Rights initiative is focused on making human rights an integral component of effective engineering practice. We are teaching tomorrow's engineers risk management, climate resiliency, life-cycle analysis, and impact assessment. Our faculty specialize in research key to advancing human health, environmental sustainability, and industrial competitiveness. Together, we are focused on safeguarding people and nature, while advancing innovation.

The Financial Case for Systemic Social Change

Posted on October 1, 2022October 29, 2022 by Branzell, Alex

The social and environmental challenges of today—climate change, income inequality, modern slavery and human trafficking, systemic racism, the human costs of war, the COVID-19 pandemic, among others—are complex and interconnected issues. The systemic nature of these challenges poses risks to investors across their portfolios. They also provide opportunities for investors to think about impact systemically in a manner that promotes sustainability and respect for human rights while also adding to the bottom line. Join us for a presentation and discussion with representatives of The Investment Integration Project (TIIP), a leader in system-level investing.

Presenters:

William (Bill) Burckart is the CEO of The Investment Integration Project (TIIP), an applied research and consulting services firm that helps investors manage systemic risks and opportunities. He is also co-founder of Colorful Capital, which is bringing capital support and scaffolding to enterprises founded and led by members of the broad LGBTQIA+ community, and a Fellow of the High Meadows Institute. He previously served as a member of the advisory council of the Investments & Wealth Institute’s WealthBoard 100 and as a visiting scholar at the U.S. Federal Reserve. He is the co-author of “21st Century Investing: Redirecting Financial Strategies to Drive Systems Change” (Berrett-Koehler, 2021) and co-editor of “New Frontiers of Philanthropy: A Guide to the New Tools and New Actors that Are Reshaping Global Philanthropy and Social Investing” (Oxford University Press, 2014). He is a founder or co-founder of two impact investment advisory firms, Burckart Consulting and Impact Economy LLC. His writing and perspective has been featured in Barron’s, Bloomberg, Pensions & Investments, The Guardian, Forbes, Quartz, top1000funds, Investment & Pensions Europe (I&PE), Benefits & Pensions, InvestmentNews, Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR), ImpactAlpha, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, and FundFire to name a few.

Kilian Moote is a Managing Director within Georgeson’s ESG advisory practice, where he is building the firm’s ESG advisory practice. As a social entrepreneur he has helped develop and managed numerous initiatives or organizations at the intersection of purpose and profit.

Kilian has 15 years of experience working with executives and investors on human and labor rights, including leading the development of the labor rights benchmark KnowTheChain and launching two collaborative funds – Funders Organized for Rights in the Global Economy and Moving the Market. Prior to joining Georgeson, Kilian developed and managed strategies on corporate accountability and public policy for the private foundation Humanity United. He has deep expertise on responsible supply chain management, having previously taught an MBA course at the University of San Francisco. As a leading advocate on social and human capital issues he’s frequently called on to provide guidance. He is currently advising The Investment Integration Project and involved in various effort to enhance human capital management and human rights standards. Kilian earned an MBA with Distinction from the Imperial College Business School in London and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of San Francisco.

Understanding the Effectiveness of State and Worker-Led Efforts to Combat Forced Labour in Supply Chains

Posted on October 1, 2022November 2, 2022 by Akaslan, Imge

The Business and Human Rights Workshop is dedicated to the development and discussion of works-in-progress and other non-published academic research.

Multi-national corporations’ (MNCs) responsibility for human rights abuse within global supply chains, including forced labour, human trafficking and modern slavery is increasingly recognised in international standards including the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, United Nations Global Compact, and the Sustainable Development Goals. However, there is mounting evidence that voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) mechanisms—such as supplier codes of conduct, ethical certification, and social auditing—widely relied upon to uphold human rights in supply chains are failing. In light of these failures, governments and worker organizations are pioneering alternatives, including home state legislation—through which the home states of MNCs introduce top-down requirements for more meaningful changes in corporate behaviour— and new legally binding transnational supply chain agreements called worker-driven social responsibility (WSR) initiatives, which exert bottom-up pressure to change commercial practices. There is considerable optimism that these twin developments are creating a new wave of regulation to address forced labour and overlapping abuses in global supply chains. How can we best study the effectiveness of these mechanisms and their interactions?

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Associated Workshop – April 5 – Violence Against Women and the Normative Gap

About Our Experts

Rashida Manjoo

Carla Ferstman

David Richards

Linda MacDonald & Jeanne Sarson

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About Carl Wilkens

"I'm Not Leaving"

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Call for Student Proposals

HRCH Youth Advisory Team

HRCH Youth Advisory Team Coordinators

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