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Innovation and Resiliency: Human Rights Organizations during the Pandemic
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Innovation and Resiliency: Human Rights Organizations during the pandemic
The COVID-19 Pandemic is changing the way human rights organizations work and they have had to find innovative ways to move forward. Join us for a conversation about some of the new tactics and strategies these organizations are using for advocacy, research, programming, and strategic planning.
Iain Levine - Moderator
Women Deliver - Marcy Hersh
OUTRIGHT International - Jessica Stern - (available until 1)
Memria - Louis Bickford
Amnesty International - Arielle Newton
Witness - TBD
Substantive human rights issues in pandemic
What do you see as the biggest contribution that the human rights framework can make to addressing the pandemic?
Which human rights are being most violated as governments respond to COVID-19?
Given the focus on COVID-19 and its health and economic impact, how do you maintain a focus on other human rights issues and convince people that human rights are still relevant? How has Covid-19 affected your strategic planning as an organization?
How do you ensure sustainability of NGOs?
How is the crisis affecting fundraising and prospects for economic security? How are NGOs adapting?
How do you get your work done? How do you document abuses or do your programmatic and advocacy work when you can't travel? What innovations have you developed? Does technology allow you to get things done? What lessons have you learned so far?
Personal/individual challenges
What are some strategies for resiliency you have used? How are you and your colleagues balancing your professional human rights activism with the personal challenges of dealing with the pandemic?
Speakers Bios:
Iain Levine - Moderator
Iain Levine teaches human rights at SIPA as adjunct faculty. He has spent nearly 40 years working for international humanitarian and human rights organizations including UNICEF, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and now works as senior human rights advisor at Facebook.
Women Deliver - Marcy Hersh
Marcy Hersh (she/her) advocates on behalf of women and girls in humanitarian and fragile settings, ensuring that the international system recognizes their capacities and addresses their needs. Before joining Women Deliver, Marcy was with the Women's Refugee Commission as the Senior Advocacy Officer, providing strategic analysis to develop the organization's policy and advocacy agenda and representing the organization's research in the United Nations system. Prior to this, Marcy worked for Refugees International as a Senior Advocate, leading the organization's Women and Girls' Rights Program.
Marcy has more than 12 years of humanitarian experience working in advocacy, coordination, and programming on gender equality, women and girls' empowerment, and protection from gender-based violence in humanitarian settings. She has worked for UN agencies, including the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) in South Sudan and UN Women in Haiti, as well as international, national and grassroots NGOs. She has significant field experience in acute and protracted emergency settings, working in more than 20 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean, and Asia.
Marcy received a Master's degree from the School for International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University.
OUTRIGHT International - Jessica Stern - (available until 1)
Jessica Stern, Executive Director of OutRight Action International, is based in New York. Jessica specializes in gender, sexuality and human rights globally. At OutRight, she has supported the legal registration of LGBTIQ organizations globally, helped secure the mandate of the United Nations Independent Expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, and advanced the UN LGBTI Core Group. She has provided expert opinions to governments globally, regional human rights institutions, and UN mechanisms, including UNWomen where she serves as a member of the LGBTI Reference Group. Her writing has been cited by the Indian Supreme Court in its seminal judgment decriminalizing same-sex relations and featured in The Oxford Handbook of Women, Peace and Security (2019). She is frequently quoted by the media, including by The New York Times and The Guardian. She is an adjunct associate professor at Columbia University's School of International & Public Affairs.
Memria - Louis Bickford
Louis Bickford has been working in the field of international human rights for over 20 years. From 2012-2017, Bickford managed the global human rights program at the Ford Foundation. Prior to that, at the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), he was a founding staff member (2001) and a member of the Senior Management team (through 2010). He later worked at RFK Human Rights as a member of the Executive Leadership team, and as the director of the European Office. He has consulted with various national and international institutions including the United Nations and various philanthropic foundations in every world region. He has a PhD from McGill University and an MA from the New School, both in Political Science. He is currently the Founder and CEO of MEMRIA (www.memria.org), a social enterprise which develops partnerships with organizations to collect, analyze, and circulate narrative accounts of past violence with the aim of strengthening human rights.
Amnesty International - Arielle Newton
Arielle Newton is a Field Organizer with Amnesty International USA where she's tasked with mobilizing members and activists in an assortment of states, including NY. She began her career at AIUSA in 2015, when she was a fundraising canvasser.