Items tagged with Human Rights
News
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December 7As the Docs Program undertakes visual work on behalf of lifers incarcerated for decades because they are ineligible for parole, we confront a ban on photographing and filming in prisons. Prison Portraits may be useful in providing not only a way to deal with the ban, but also an argument why it is wrong. -
July 3As “Let the Fire Burn” (2013) and “The Bombing of Osage Avenue” (1987) show in very different ways, May 13, 1985 was a traumatic day in the history of police/citizen relations in Philadelphia. Its legacy is reflected in contemporary controversies over race relations in America. -
March 8Prof. Rangita de Silva de Alwis recently shared her insights on the urgency of women’s rights in this moment with Penn Today. -
June 26Adam Garnick L’21, co-director of the Penn Law Immigrant Rights Project offers his take on the recent SCOTUS decision on Department of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam. -
June 18Leaders from around the globe convene for a virtual event through the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School’s Global Institute for Human Rights. -
April 20Alyssa Cannizzaro L’21 and Eduarda Lague L’21, two students in Associate Dean Rangita de Silva de Alwis’ International Women’s Human Rights class, share their insights from their research papers on COVID-19’s impact on two key issues: reproductive healthcare and domestic violence.
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December 27Raghav Mendiratta and Vibha Mohan -
June 5Ebola. It’s perhaps appropriate that the name itself is a French bastardization of an indigenous name for a river in the Congo. As the Democratic Republic of the Congo, one of the most fragile states in the world, struggles to find its footing amid a contested presidential election and various rebellions, the nation is also facing the newest instantiation of Ebola outbreak. The ongoing outbreak, first identified in August 2018, is now the deadliest since the outbreak of 2014-16, which began in Guinea in 2013, directly caused more than 10,000 deaths and indirectly caused many thousands more. -
May 15Radhika Coomaraswamy, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict and High-level Mediation Advisory Group to the UN Secretary-General, will serve as a Bok Visiting International Professor in the Fall of 2019 and will teach a course on Women, Peace, and Security with Associate Dean of International Affairs, Rangita de Silva de Alwis.
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May 9Few law school classes involve convenings at the UN. Even fewer give students a forum to discuss their policy proposals with UN leadership. Yet Penn Law students in Associate Dean for International Programs Rangita de Silva de Alwis’s seminar on “New Debates in International Women’s Rights” did just that when they convened at the United Nations on April 29 to present their research to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), UN Women, Office of Legal Affairs, and the newly appointed Office of the Secretary-General’s Victims’ Rights Advocate. The students had the opportunity to present to Under-Secretary-General and Legal Counsel Miguel de Serpa Soares and Assistant Secretary-General Jane Connors and other experts. For students eager to share a semester or more of research, this audience of key policy leaders was an inspiration. -
April 1A post published last week titled, “A Diverse House,” accused freshman Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN) of being a driving force behind the spread of anti-Semitism within the halls of Congress. While we strongly disagree with this false allegation, we write to emphasize that, much like the frenzied outcry that Rep. Omar’s Tweets generated, that post failed to acknowledge the broader context in which Rep. Omar’s criticisms of AIPAC and Israeli policies must necessarily be understood–in particular, the rise of white nationalism and Islamophobia in this country. We write to provide some of this necessary context.
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February 27Twenty-two years ago Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty changed the national conversation on race, gender and reproductive justice. Two decades later, it remains more critical than ever before–a rallying cry around the world, for education, awareness, and action. Its vision for reproductive justice for all women engages in the global conversations on Female Genital Mutilation, virginity testing, forced pregnancy, forced sterilization and asks questions on how women’s ability to control their bodies is constantly challenged by politics, economics, race, cultural traditions, and injustice.
A whole generation of feminist scholars and practitioners are trained on Dorothy Robert’s groundbreaking scholarship. In marking International Women’s Day, we speak to her about the way she continues to exert an influence on the study of law, gender, and its intersections.
A Q&A with Rangita de Silva de Alwis, Associate Dean of International Affairs
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November 13In the aftermath of this attack, CNN reported: “Dismay, horror, and disbelief were feelings shared by many in the aftermath of the mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh.” Similar headlines blazed the front pages of international dailies, such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, BBC, and The Guardian. While the international community certainly reacted to the shooting with dismay and horror, disbelief was not among the emotions that registered in the Jewish community.
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October 2According to the United Nations, Rohingya Muslims are considered to be the most persecuted minority group in the world. These unfortunate people are an ethnic Muslim minority numbering around one million living in the Buddhist majority country of Myanmar. The Rohingya have been residing in the northern parts of “Rakhine”, which is a geographically isolated state in western Myanmar. The word “Rohingya” is considered taboo in a country where they have been residing for more than a century. The continued victimization of Rohingyas at the hands of the Myanmar government is not a contemporary issue. The former British colony after achieving independence in 1948 has been struggling with armed ethnic and religious conflict.
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June 29Established in 2012 in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania Law School, the fellowship creates new pathways for students to build careers in international rule of law and human rights. -
June 20The United Nations (UN) has long characterized the Rohingya Muslims as one of the world’s most persecuted minorities, with anti-Rohingya and anti-Muslim sentiment tainting Burma’s political and social spheres. In contravention to international human rights law, Burmese officials subject Rohingya Muslims to a spectrum of human rights violations including the denial of citizenship rights, restrictions on religious freedom, forced displacement, gender-based violence and the arbitrary deprivation of life. -
March 6Transnational Legal Clinic lecturer in law Ayodele Gansallo has been working hard to assist those affected by the recent Trump travel ban. Click the link to read more on Philly.com -
December 10In honor of Human Rights Day on December 10th, Hayley Winograd L’17, shares her reflections on her documentary A Dignified Death, which addresses issues of the treatment of prisoners and compassionate release from Pennsylvania state prisons. Introduction by Editor Patricia Stottlemyer, L’17. -
October 25Two titans of the global human rights movement reflected on the challenges facing women’s human rights, on September 20, before a packed room of students and faculty at Penn Law. Associate Dean for International Programs Rangita de Silva de Alwis moderated the conversation between former United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary General on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders Hina Jilani and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay. -
October 11Earlier in the year, on International Women’s Day, The United Nations announced an initiative to end child marriage by 2030. If nothing is done to accelerate change, women married as children will reach one billion by 2030. While child marriage is well-documented as a heinous crime against girls, from a development perspective, addressing the causes of child marriage will be more expedient than addressing the consequences of child marriage: vulnerability to violence, maternal mortality, HIV Aids, and feminization of poverty, among others. As we mark the first year after nations committed to a new development agenda, the Sustainable Development Goals, ending early child marriage must be defined as both a women’s rights issue and a development imperative. -
July 28Girls’ education as a justice issue expands the notion of the right to education and invokes the right to education as a justiciable right. This new definition of education as justice provides a fresh lens to analyze the current war against girl’s education. -
March 16Montco Court opinion on a denied petition filed by Child Advocacy Clinic professors, Kara Finck and Jennifer Nagda, highlights misunderstandings between state and federal laws which leaves children with Special Immigrant Juvenile status unprotected. -
January 22TLC calls for IACHR hearing about Central Americans held in detention centers. -
July 17After analyzing numerous documentaries about sex trafficking, Law Professor Emerita Kate Nace Day decided to make one that focuses on a vision of civil justice for survivors. -
June 8Like “The Act of Killing,” Joshua Oppenheimer’s “The Look of Silence” examines the 1965 Indonesian genocide; this time the focus is Adi Rukun, the brother of a victim, who pursues his own mission of truth and reconciliation. -
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November 10The late Harry Reicher, Adjunct Professor at Penn Law, made extensive use of visual material in teaching Holocaust Studies in the Law. His talk at the Shoah Foundation explains how and why. -
May 27Lawyers play a supporting role in protecting and assisting protesters who interact with digital visual technology. The lawyers may be practicing criminal law, civil liberties, or international human rights.