October Full Moon Feels- right?!? Hope everyone is thriving one month into the Fall semester. For those in hybrid course options, please continue to wear your mask, wash your hands, and abide by the Columbia Student Health Compact. Hang in there and take care, HRHP friends in Brooklyn and Queens!
Now for the usual business:
We hope to have a small social-distancing picnic this Friday. Yet, this may by subject to change. We will monitor any university policy updates in response to city and state shifts this week. We will confirm on Friday if the picnic is still on. In the meantime, take care of yourselves and each other- in mind and body!
Here is the recording for our faculty meet & greet! Hope the link works- but we might be working out a new way to get videos on our website.
Very best,
Team HRHP
HRHP Faculty Highlight:
Jessica Alexander is a humanitarian aid professional with 15 years experience in operations, evaluation and policy. She has conducted large scale evaluations, assessments and policy research for the UN, Red Cross and various NGOs on a range of humanitarian issues including: child protection, shelter, emergency education, coordination, accountability and humanitarian effectiveness. Jessica is a former a Fulbright Scholar who received the award to research child soldiers in Sierra Leone in 2006.
Interested in learning more? Join us for a conversation with Jessica Alexander on Monday, October 5th regarding COVID, BLM, and rethinking humanitarianism for the next century. Please register below!
Upcoming Events
EVENT
Humanitarian turning points over the past quarter century: Is Covid-19 and the #BLM movement finally forcing a moment of change?
For 25 years the aid sector has endlessly tried to reform itself. But change has not come easily. Will new pressures and operating models brought on by the post-COVID landscape and #BLM be enough to push through reforms that had been slow to take hold until now?
Jessica Alexander is a humanitarian aid professional with nearly 20 years experience in operations, evaluation and policy. Her career includes global deployments spanning Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. She currently teaches humanitarian affairs at numerous global universities and is the editor of The New Humanitarian’s Rethinking Humanitarianism series. She has authored various policy papers, mainstream articles and a book, Chasing Chaos: My Decade In and Out of Humanitarian Aid. She also teaches a SIPA course titled Accountability in Humanitarian Assistance in the spring semester.
The New Humanitarian series can be found: https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/in-depth/Rethinking-humanitarianism
To sign up for the New Humanitarian weekly newsletter, please visit: http://bit.ly/tnhnewsletter
This panel discussion will examine how incarceration affects the exercise of voting rights. Experts will discuss issues including voting in prisons, restoration of voting rights, and the advocacy and political engagement work of formerly incarcerated persons.
For Zoom login information, please register here: http://bit.ly/election_prison
Moderator: Professor Bernard Harcourt, Isidore and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science, Columbia Law School
Panelists:
-Norris Henderson, Voice of the Experienced in Louisiana
-Jennifer Holmes - NAACP LDF
-Kevin Morris - Brennan Center's Voting Rights and Elections Program
-Nicole D. Porter, Director of Advocacy - Sentencing Project
For more information on the series and speakers bios, go to http://www.humanrightscolumbia.org/events/elections-and-human-rights-series-voting-rights-and-incarceration
Join HRHP for a Social Distancing Picnic. Follow Student Health Compact Guidelines in Advance (Testing, Symptom Self-Check). Wear a mask. Picnic seating will be distanced. Bring your own fall snacks/beverage/blanket/utensils/hand sanitizer, etc. Space Limited to 15 people.
On the occasion of World Mental Health Day, October 10, 2020 - The Azadi Project in partnership with SIPA, Columbia University and LA World Affairs Council is hosting a one of its kind event - webinar and film screening - highlighting the importance of mental health and psychosocial support for asylum seekers with a special focus on refugee women.
The film, In Turmoil, is filmed by refugee women of the Moria camp in Lesbos, Greece. The 10-minute film is an honest dialogue by four refugee women, who fearlessly share their vulnerability to shed light on the critical aspect of mental health. Through the process of film-making they share their stories of suffering from PTSD, depression and anxiety, while fleeing for safety and while seeking asylum. For the first time ever, refugee women give us a glimpse into their minds and lives.
The webinar will be an expert-led discussion focusing on the importance of including mental health awareness and access to psychosocial support (PSS) for asylum-seekers in the asylum-seeking policy of countries. Several scientific and data-driven studies have proven that refugees experiencing mental distress and with no access to PSS have a much lower chance at succeeding during their immigration interviews and hence are at higher risk of deportation.
Panel discussion:
Importance of providing mental health and psychosocial support to asylum seekers
Kaja Perina, the Editor-in-Chief of Psychology Today, U.S's leading mental health magazine will serve as the moderator
Panelists include:
Every.Last.One Executive Director and Co-founder Dr. Amy Cohen
International Rescue Committee (IRC) Senior Manager and psychologist Georgia Karoutzou
The Azadi Project will present a policy paper highlighting the urgent need for inclusion of psychosocial support in governmental asylum policy-making with a special focus on women.
Columbia University, AC4. Research Assistant for Sustaining Peace Project
Fall 2020
Application Due Date: October 14, 2020 The Sustaining Peace Project employs complexity science as an integrative platform for synthesizing knowledge across disciplines, sectors and communities. For the past few years, we have been gathering relevant empirical research on factors that promote intergroup peacefulness and prevent or mitigate intergroup violence within and between societies and nations. This has resulted in lists of variables at the micro-individual, meso-community, and macro-national/international levels that a) promote peace and b) prevent destructive conflict/war. Additional diagrams of the variables described above may be available upon request in the full job description. Subsequently, in service of developing a causal loop diagram, we began to map the empirical relations of each of these variables to a) the 8 variables in our core engine, and b) the other variables in the model. We are currently seeking a research intern sufficiently familiar with peace research to work with us to review the literature we have gathered to answer the following questions:
Have we correctly identified the most important variables relevant to peacefulness and supported by empirical research at each of the levels?
Are we missing any critical (empirically-supported) variables that should be included?
Are the relations (links and loops) that we have currently specified on the map correct and empirically supported?
Are there other empirical studies that should be included in our summaries and mapping?
We are seeking a highly intelligent, organized and interested individual with research experience to review each of the levels of research, address the above questions, and briefly summarize the findings for each factor. We hope that these reviews and summaries will result in 3 distinct chapters for a book we will publish on the research - one chapter for each level - which could include the RA as co-author. The position pays $20 per hour, and the schedule is flexible. Interested parties should send their resume and a cover letter to Allegra Chen-Carrel at ac3922@columbia.edu by end of day October 14th, 2020 with the subject line: CLD research assistant. Please include your expected graduation date in your email.
Ethical Fashion is doing a fundraiser for garment workers in Bangladesh and we could really use your help! More info below:
After the outbreak of COVID-19, millions of garment factory workers in Bangladesh were laid off after brands canceled and postponed orders. Many were sent home without any wages or severance pay, and 6 months later, they are still struggling financially. SIPA Ethical Fashion teamed up with Penn State and the University of Dhaka to create a fundraising initiative, and we'll be donating our money to BASHI, a woman-owned NGO in Bangladesh (referred to us by Professor McGill). Our donations will be used to buy food and PPE, and BASHI will distribute the aid packages to garment workers through its trade union network. Our goal is 3K, and we could really use your help. If you are financially able, please consider donating!
If you want to read more about the fundraising campaign, you can check out our news story on the SIPA website here: https://www.sipa.columbia.edu/.../student-group-launches..., and you can visit our GoFundMe page and donate at: https://www.gofundme.com/.../covid19-relief-for-garment....
Also, if you are interested in garment workers’ rights and/or want more opportunities to study labor issues, feel free to reach out to the Ethical Fashion Working Group!
Contact us!
Professor Elazar Bakan, Director of the Human Rights and Humanitarian Policy Concentration, Director of the Institute for the Study of Human Rights
