10/25 Event: Catalysts for Change: How the UN’s Independent Experts Promote Human Rights

Catalysts for Change: How the UN’s Independent Experts Promote Human Rights

Start/End: Thursday, October 25, 2012 12:10 PM EDT — 01:10 PM EDT

Location: Jerome Greene Hall 106

Please join HRI for a lunch time discussion with Jamil Dakwar, Director of the ACLU’s Human Rights Program, and Ted Piccone, a CLS graduate and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, on the role of UN special procedures in working with advocacy efforts and promoting human rights.

Ted is a senior fellow and deputy director for Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution. His latest book, Catalysts for Change: How the UN’s Independent Experts Promote Human Rights (Brookings Institution Press, 2012). Catalysts for Change examines the strengths and weaknesses of one of the United Nations’ most important human rights mechanisms—the collection of independent experts known as special procedures—as they negotiate the rocky terrain where rights meet reality. These independent experts serve as the eyes and ears of the UN human rights system. Despite their prolific work as experts and advocates, however, there has been no empirical study of their impact at the national level—until now. This book provides concrete evidence of why the system works and ways it can be improved.

Jamil is the director of the ACLU’s Human Rights Program, which is dedicated to holding the U.S. government accountable to its international human rights obligations and commitments. HRP uses a human rights framework 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.Jamil will speak about the ACLU’s experience working with UN Independent Experts domestically.