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Greetings!
The Harvard Humanitarian is a monthly e-newsletter compiled by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) to publicize news, publications, and events in the Harvard community related to advancing responses to humanitarian crises of war and disaster. Please help us make this a robust resource by contributing your Harvard community news items via email. |
SPECIAL FEATURE
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Registration Now Open for the Humanitarian Response Intensive Course: April 16-28, 2013
The Lavine Family Humanitarian Studies Initiative at the Humanitarian Academy at Harvard organizes training workshops for professionals with interest in pursuing or further developing careers in the humanitarian sector. The Humanitarian Response Intensive Course is offered each year to professionals from around the word in Boston, Massachusetts.
Participants will utilize knowledge of the humanitarian field gained in the classroom learning sessions (April 16-25) during a three-day field simulation exercise (April 26-28). Attendees will spend two nights in the forest and participate in a complicated disaster and conflict scenario. During the simulation, participants will work in teams representing different humanitarian nongovernmental organizations and will engage with a wide range of local and non-state actors (roles developed and filled by faculty, course alumni, and affiliates) to create a service delivery plan. The simulation will be held rain or shine.
Registration for the 2013 course is now open!
To learn more, please click here.
To register, please click here.
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ANNOUNCEMENTS
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February 26th Academy Lecture Series: Khmer Rouge Tribunal and its Contribution to Transitional Justice
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Hauser Hall 102 (Harvard Law School Campus)
4-6 PM
Please join the Humanitarian Academy at Harvard for a lecture and roundtable discussion with Andrew Cayley on the topic of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal and its Contribution to Transitional Justice. Andrew Cayley is a Queen's Counsel and leading international criminal lawyer, who has prosecuted and defended at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia ("ICTY"), International Criminal Court ("ICC"), Special Court for Sierra Leone ("SCSL") and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia ("ECCC"). He is currently the United Nations Chief International Co-Prosecutor of the ECCC, the Khmer Rouge Tribunal based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
The talk is part of the Humanitarian Academy at Harvard Lecture Series 2012-13 and is being co-sponsored with the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School.
To learn more about the event, please click here.
HHI Partnership Releases Study on Human Rights in Cambodia
 The Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, in collaboration with Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association (ADHOC), has released a new study entitled "Victims participation before the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. Baseline Study of the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association's Civil Party Scheme for Case 002."
Victims' participation is one of the unique features of the trials held by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), also known as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (KRT). In November 2011, the ECCC Trial Chamber began its second trial, hearing evidence against three former top ranking Khmer Rouge leaders. Nearly 4,000 victims participate as Civil Parties in this second case (Case 002), over ten times more than in the first trial. This unprecedented large number of Civil Parties in an already complex trial poses challenges for the Court, lawyers and NGOs alike to achieve a balance between the rights of victims to an effective participation and the rights of the accused to a timely trial. ADHOC has consequently established a Civil Party Representative (CPR) scheme to act as the intermediary organisation for nearly half of the Civil Parties admitted in the case.
This study constitutes a baseline analysis for the monitoring and evaluation of the CPR scheme implemented by ADHOC. Specifically, among Civil Parties assisted by ADHOC in Case 002, it aims to examine: (1) awareness, knowledge and attitudes of the ECCC; (2) their perceptions and expectations about justice; and (3) their expectations in regards to collective and moral reparations. It is anticipated that the findings will have broader lessons-learned to inform the participation of large numbers of victims in criminal trials in international and hybrid tribunals dealing with mass atrocities.
To read the study, please click here.
To learn more about HHI's Program on Vulnerable Populations, please click here.
Faculty Member Discusses the Distribution of Knowledge in US News & World Report
Dr. Jennifer Chan, HHI Faculty Member and a Public Voices fellow at the OpEd Project for US News & World Report, recently wrote an article entitled on the role of academia and the distribution of knowledge entitled " To Honor Aaron Swartz, Let Knowledge Go Free." Chan links this broader discussion to the provision of aid during disasters and to humanitarian interventions.
To read the article, click here.
To learn more about HHI's Program on Evaluation and Implementation Science, please click here.
Japan Medical Association Publishes HHI Faculty Lectures
In March 2012, Associate and Affiliated Faculty Drs. Stephanie Kayden, Pooja Agrawal, and Maya Arii presented lectures at the Japan Medical Association Disaster Medicine Course in Tokyo. Dr. Kayden presented on ethics and humanitarianism, Dr. Agrawal on international standards for public health programming, and Dr. Arii on rapid assessment in disasters. The Japan Medical Association has published the lectures in its 2013 January/February issue. The English publication is forthcoming in April.
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UPCOMING EVENTS
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Event times, dates, and locations listed here are subject to change without notice. Please contact the event host for more information.
Ethical Challenges and the United Nations: A Whistleblower's Tale
Thursday, February 14, 2013
5:30-7:00 PM
Mugar 200, Tufts Fletcher School of International Relations
Upon graduation from the Fletcher School in 1980, James Wasserstrom joined the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in New York through its first management training program for development professionals. Over the next two decades, he served with the UN system in various capacities, including with UNDP in Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, and the Republic of Korea; and with the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) in New York as Chief Financial and Fundraising Officer and subsequently Senior Program Manager for a number of African countries. In 1999, he took leave from UNCDF and for two years worked on Wall Street at American Express International as Vice President of Strategic Alliances in the company's Foreign Exchange Services division. Following the events of September 11, 2001, in 2002 Mr. Wasserstrom returned to the UN system, this time in its Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO). He was sent on a brief assignment to Afghanistan, then to the UN Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) as head of logistics for that 17,000-person operation. In 2003, in addition to the logistics assignment he was asked to establish and lead a new office overseeing Kosovo's public utilities and to take on the role of lead anticorruption officer for UNMIK. After uncovering allegations of massive corruption involving a $500 million kickback scheme from which his immediate superior, the Principal Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary General (SRSG), and Kosovo's Minister of Mines and Energy at the time, were to benefit, he became a whistle-blower.
To learn more about this talk, click here.
"Reasserting the Unity of International Law: The ICJ as a Human Rights Court, and Other Departures from Old Doctrines"
February 20, 2013
12-1 PM
Hauser 104
Mads Andenas, Professor of Law at the University of Oslo, will assess recent developments in international adjudication that attempt to overcome the fragmentation of the field, including the effort of the International Court of Justice to reassert its centrality by taking on the role of a human rights court.
Professor Andenas is a Fellow of Institute of European and Comparative Law, University of Oxford; Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London; and Editor of the International and Comparative Law Quarterly and of the European Business Law Review. He also serves as one of the five members of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.
To learn more, click here.
The State as Partner: Why and How International NGOs Bring the State Back In
Thursday, February 21, 2013
4:15 PM
Belfer, Weil Town Hall, Lobby Level, HKS
 Critics contend that NGOs often usurp the role of states by providing crucial services in developing countries, which can have significant economic, social, and political consequences for local communities. And many NGOs eschew any state involvement in their work, citing problems with corruption, bureaucratic inefficiencies, and political manipulation. Here Professor Tamara Kay examines why some NGOs view the state as a key partner and stakeholder and how they build relationships with states at the local, regional, and national levels.
For more information about the program and how to register, please click here.
Brown Bag Seminar: Mixing Medical Aid and Human Rights in an Israeli Humanitarian Clinic
Monday, March 4, 2013
12:30-1:30 PM
114 Curtis St, Somerville, MA 02144
Ilil Benjamin, Visiting Fellow at the Feinstein International Center, will illustrate the tensions that emerge daily among aid workers as they confront the contradictions ensuing from their dual mandates. Sponsored by the Feinstein International Center.
The combination of short-term aid with human rights advocacy, peace-building, or development-oriented work is an increasingly visible phenomenon in the global humanitarian space. Such mandate-mixing, whether planned, accidental or improvised in response to unpredictable aid contexts, is nothing new. But its practical consequences for aid workers and recipients alike remain underexplored. This chapter examines the daily manifestations of two coinciding mandates - for aid and for human rights advocacy - in a medical free clinic based in central Israel. Operating as the humanitarian arm of a human rights NGO, this clinic utilized informal networks of medical professionals to provide both primary and specialized care for anyone ineligible for government-sponsored healthcare, including over 60,000 asylum seekers from Sudan and Eritrea who have entered Israel through the Sinai desert since the mid-00s.
For information, please click here.
Crisis Management and the Social Sector
Thursday, March 7
4:15 PM
Belfer, Weil Town Hall, Lobby Level HKS
In responding to and recovering from large, complex disasters (like Katrina, the Haiti, Chile, and Japan earthquakes, Irene, and Sandy), we argue that a decentralized, "fast and light" response will outperform a more centralized response. What are the implications of this for the social sector, which plays a key role in providing resources and expertise in the aftermath of disasters?
For more information, please click here.
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PUBLICATIONS & PRESS
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- Agrawal, Pooja. "International Standards for Public Health Activities." Conferences and Lectures Special Feature: Comprehensive CME Program on Disaster Medicine, in Japanese Medical Association Journal, Vol 56 no. 1, Jan/Feb 2013.
- Arii, Maya. "Rapid Assessment in Disasters." Conferences and Lectures Special Feature: Comprehensive CME Program on Disaster Medicine, in Japanese Medical Association Journal, Vol 56 no. 1, Jan/Feb 2013.
- Bhatt, Mihir. "'Saralaben looked for solutions locally,'" Daily News and Analysis. Jan 11, 2013.
- "Crowdsourcing," The Kojo Nnamdi Show. February 5, 2013.
- Chan, Jennifer. "To Honor Aaron Swartz, Let Knowledge Go Free," U.S. News and World Report. February 1, 2013.
- Fink, Sheri. "A Queens High Rise Where Fear, Death and Myth Collided," The New York Times. December 19, 2012.
- Kayden, Stephanie. "Humanitarian Response and Ethics." Conferences and Lectures Special Feature: Comprehensive CME Program on Disaster Medicine, in Japanese Medical Association Journal, Vol 56 no. 1, Jan/Feb 2013.
- Kirchenbauer, Nadine, Balthazard, Mychelle, Ky, Latt, Vinck, Patrick, and Phuong Pham, "Victims Participation Before the Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia: Baseline Study of the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association's Civil Party Scheme for Case 002," Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association and Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. January 2013.
- Stan, Lavinia, and Nedelsky, Nadya. Encyclopedia of Transitional Justice, (Cambridge University Press, 2013).
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About The Harvard Humanitarian Initiative
HHI fosters interdisciplinary collaboration at Harvard University in order to improve the effectiveness of humanitarian strategies for relief, protection, and prevention; instill human rights principles and practices in these strategies; and educate and train the next generation of humanitarian leaders. In 2005, the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative was established as a University-wide interfaculty academic and research center, supported by the Office of the Provost and the Harvard School of Public Health with the participation of faculty from Harvard schools and affiliated hospitals. For more information, visit www.hhi.harvard.edu. |
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