Events

CHRGJ Presents: “Strategies for Change in Haiti: Tackling the Challenges of Gender Based Violence in Post-earthquake Haiti” (September 13, 2010)

6-8 PM/ Furman Hall 212

Please join CHRGJ in a multi-disciplinary panel discussion about gender based violence in Haiti as the country works to rebuild itself after the devastating earthquake of January 2010. Panelists will discuss the legal obstacles to documenting and prosecuting gender-based violence (“GBV”), the use of new media tools in combating and responding to the incidence of GBV, the role of the Haitian Diaspora in creating a new future for Haitian women, and work being done by grass-roots organizations on the ground who are mobilizing against violence and injustice.

For background on gender-based violence in Haiti, please see Our Bodies are Still Trembling: Haitian Women’s Fight against Rape (July 2010)

Panelists:

Brian Concannon, Director, Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH)
Eramithe Delva, Founding member of KOFAVIV (Komisyon Fanm Viktim pou Viktim, The Commission of Women Victims for Victims)
Emily Jacobi, Co-director of Digital Democracy
Margaret Satterthwaite, Faculty Director, CHRGJ; Assistant Professor of Clinical Law of the Global Justice Clinic, NYU School of Law
Margarette Tropnas, Executive Director, Dwa Fanm

About our Moderator:

Margaret Satterthwaite is Associate Professor of Clinical Law at NYU School of Law, where she is a Faculty Director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) and director of the Global Justice Clinic. She graduated magna cum laude from NYU School of Law and served as a law clerk to Judge Betty B. Fletcher of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1999-2000 and to the judges of the International Court of Justice in 2001-2002. Professor Satterthwaite’s research focuses on economic and social rights, human rights and counter-terrorism, gender and human rights, and rights-based approaches to development and emergency. She has worked for a variety of human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights First, and has consulted with U.N. agencies. She has served as a member of the Board of Directors of Amnesty International USA, and has held various leadership positions in legal and academic professional organizations. Her connections to Haiti began when she was hired as an investigator for the Commission de Verité et de Justice (Haitian Truth and Justice Commission) in 1995. Since then she has made Haiti a focus of her writing and advocacy. Along with collaborators from CHRGJ, Zanmi Lasante, Partners In Health, and the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights, she co-authored the human rights report Wòch nan Soley: The Denial of the Right to Water in Haiti (2008) and a journal article with the same title, published in Health and Human Rights (2009). She is Chair of the Haiti Advocacy Committee of RFK Memorial Center for Justice and Human Rights, serves as an Advisory Committee member for the newly-formed service organization HaitiCorps, and is currently engaged in a project on gender-based violence and economic and social rights in Haiti.

About our Panelists

Brian Concannon, Jr., Esq., IJDH Director, co-managed the BAI in Haiti for eight years, from 1996–2004, and worked for the United Nations as a Human Rights Officer in 1995–1996. He founded IJDH, and has been the Director since 2004. He helped prepare the prosecution of the Raboteau Massacre trial in 2000, one of the most significant human rights cases anywhere in the Western Hemisphere. He has represented Haitian political prisoners before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and represented the plaintiff in Yvon Neptune v. Haiti, the only Haiti case ever tried before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
Mr. Concannon has received fellowships from Harvard Law School and Brandeis University and has trained international judges, U.S. asylum officers and law students across the U.S. He is a member of the Editorial Board of Health and Human Rights, An International Journal. He speaks and writes frequently about human rights in Haiti. He holds an undergraduate degree from Middlebury College and JD from Georgetown Law. He speaks English, Haitian Creole and French.

Eramithe Delvav is one of the founding members of KOFAVIV (Komisyon Fanm Viktim pou Viktim, The Commission of Women Victims for Victims) a nonprofit Haitian women’s group formed in late 2004 by a group of women from poor neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince who were raped during the 1991-94 military dictatorship. Social, economic, and political insecurity during the military dictatorship created a climate in which grave human rights violations (including gender-specific violations, most notably rape) were committed with impunity.
Delva and her co-founder Malya Villard met in 1993 through the Committee of Women to Fight for Justice, their stories of being brutally abused frighteningly similar. Both had been political activists living in the Martissant neighborhood in Port-au-Prince, and both had been violently raped and assaulted, and seen their husbands beaten to death because of their activism. Motivated not only by their own experiences, but also by the alarming increase in rapes seemingly related directly to the current political instability in the country, the women decided to set up an organization to address the medical and psychological needs of rape victims.
KOFAVIV opened its medical centre in March 2005, partnering with the Organization d'Entraide pour la Promotion Sociale (ODPPS) to provide medical assistance to victims. KOFAVIV staff, called Community Human Rights Workers (CHRWs), reaches out to women in many distressed communities to encourage them to seek medical help and counseling to get through their trauma. In just one year, through 25 active community workers, KOFAVIV has managed to treat more than 350 women.
KOFAVIV'S Community Human Rights Workers reach out to women in many distressed communities to encourage them to seek medical help and counseling to get through their trauma. In just one year, through 25 active community workers, KOFAVIV has managed to treat more than 350 women.
KOFAVIV creates and supports solidarity groups, providing informal social and psychological support for rape survivors. The groups are designed to provide mutual emotional support and to encourage members to begin undertaking collective action to fight gender-based violence.

Emily Jacobi is the Co-Director of Digital Democracy, a New York-based nonprofit organization that she co-founded in 2008 to empower marginalized communities through the use of new technologies. Working globally, Digital Democracy employs digital tools to increase media literacy and amplify the voices of marginalized communities to meaningfully engage in political processes. As Co-Director, Emily manages staff, oversees strategic planning and development and works directly with grassroots partners on project design relating to human rights, digital literacy and community development.
Emily began her career as a youth journalist working to highlight young people's voices in professional media. At the age of 13, she reported from Havana, Cuba on the lives of young Cubans during the Troubled Period in 1996. Since then she has worked on media and research projects in Latin America, West and Southern Africa and Southeast Asia, as well as En Los Campos, a multi-media exhibit highlighting the lives of teenage migrant farm workers in the United States. Prior to founding Digital Democracy she worked at Internews Network, AllAfrica.com, the Center for PeaceBuilding International and as the Y-Press Assistant Bureau Director.

Margarette D. Tropnas is the Executive Director of the Brooklyn-based NGO, Dwa Fanm. Through her career, Ms. Tropnas has dedicated herself to making a difference through social work and her commitment to the Caribbean community. Before becoming the Executive Director of Dwa Fanm, she was the Program Director at Community Counseling and Mediation (CCM) Preventive Services Program, a community-based, non-profit organization with staff dedicated to providing an array of culturally sensitive and highly effective services to immigrant families and individuals since 1982. Ms. Tropnas has also been active in issues pertaining to the Caribbean community, including the advancement of multiculturalism in neighborhood schools and ready access by Creole speakers in social service delivery. Prior to joining CCM in 2008, she had worked at the Flatbush Haitian Center for twenty years providing various services to the Haitian community. She is a former Associate Adjunct Professor at NYU’s School of Social Work. She has earned her certification in such areas as field work instruction, substance abuse, domestic violence, child abuse and neglect prevention, stress management, parenting skills, HIV/AIDS, adolescent pregnancy prevention and cultural diversity. Ms. Tropnas is the recipient of the 100 Haitian Women of Distinction Award and the City of New York Proclamation for her services in the community given by the City Council Office. She graduated from SUNY, Stony Brook, where she was awarded a B.S. in Psychology. In 1989, she earned her Master’s Degree in Social Work from New York University.