Abstract According to international human rights law, countries have to provide palliative care and pain treatment medications as part of their core obligations under the right to health. The failure to take reasonable steps to ensure that people who suffer pain have access to adequate pain treatment may also result in the violation of the obligation to protect against cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. The lecture will discuss Human Rights Watch’s research on this issue in India, Ukraine, Senegal, Kenya, and Mexico; our national and international advocacy efforts; and how we evaluate the impact of our work.
Joe Amon, PhD MSPH, is the Director of the Health and Human Rights Division at Human Rights Watch. Since joining Human Rights Watch in 2005, Joe has worked on a wide range of issues including access to medicines; discrimination, arbitrary detention and torture in health settings; censorship and the denial of health information; and the role of civil society in the response to infectious disease outbreaks and environmental health threats. Between January 2009 and June 2013 he oversaw Human Rights Watch's work on disability rights. He is an associate in the department of epidemiology at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University and a lecturer in public and international affairs at Princeton University. In 2012 he was a distinguished visiting lecturer at the Paris School of International Affairs of SciencesPo.
Building 200 (History Corner)
Room 205
Main Quad
450 Serra Mall
Stanford University
Joe Amon
Director of Health and Human Rights
Speaker
Human Rights Watch
Ben Rudolph was an ambitious computer science major planning to remain in Silicon Valley and join one of the many start-ups eager for young Stanford grads. But in his senior year he took a class, “Rethinking Refugee Communities,” which knocked him off his path and got him thinking about how to use that ambition for the greater good.
The class was co-taught by Tino Cuéllar, a Stanford Law School professor and director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Cuéllar led the class while co-director of FSI's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), which had just launched a collaboration with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The agency was looking for innovative ideas to support and protect the more than 42 million refugees, internally displaced and stateless people around the world.
When Rudolph graduated in June, he turned down offers in local tech firms and headed to Geneva as an intern for UNHCR’s nascent innovation lab. He joined Stanford alumna and CISAC faithful, Alice Bosley, in the small office with a big mission: to aid refugees by driving innovation using the latest tools of technology.
“I get to make a difference in the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in the world: refugees,” said Rudolph, a 23-year-old from Naperville, Ill., who came to Stanford on a gymnastics scholarship. “And I love that I get to meet such a diverse group of people with wildly different opinions about so many things.”
Rudolph has now joined UNHCR Innovation full time and has traveled to Ecuador to pilot one of his projects and to Thailand for an innovation workshop. On a recent trip to Esmeraldas on the northwestern coast of Ecuador, he tested out an SMS program that would help displaced people get information from the UNHCR and its partner organizations.
Bosley, the associate operations officer at UNHCR Innovation, first joined the U.N. as an intern speechwriter at the Permanent Mission of East Timor to the United Nations in New York. She was visiting some CISAC colleagues in the spring of 2012 when she learned about the burgeoning collaboration between the center and UNHCR. She volunteered for the project and became an intern with the newly formed UNHCR Innovation team, where she was later offered a full-time position.
Alice Bosley crossing a river near the Dollo Ado UNHCR refugee camp in Ethiopia.
Alice Bosley crosses a river by the Dollo Ado UNHCR refugee camp in Ethiopia. Photo: UNHCR Innovation
“UNHCR Innovation is my dream job; I am constantly traveling to new and interesting locations to work on projects and I’m able to support some of the most creative and impressive people in the organization,” said Bosley, 25, who graduated in 2011 with a degree in international relations. “It’s challenging and sometimes overwhelming. But I wouldn’t pick anything else to do at this point in my life.”
Rudolph and Bosley are models of the CISAC mission: to train the next generation of experts who will make the world a safer place. While not entrenched in the policy arena or at the forefront of arms control or Track II diplomacy, they are quietly, doggedly fulfilling the CISAC pledge to improve lives around the world.
"One of CISAC's greatest strengths over the years has been its record of attracting enormously talented students and fellows from a diverse array of disciplines and giving them a chance to work on problems that affect lives around the world,” said Cuéllar.
The UNHCR came to Cuéllar in early 2012 asking to collaborate. That initial request has led to an array of projects across campus and around the world. Cuéllar last year co-taught the class, “Rethinking Refugee Communities,” with Leslie Witt of the Palo Alto-based global design firm IDEO. That class in turn led to research trips in Ethiopia and Rwanda with UNHCR and the International Rescue Committee to test out some of the student projects to improve food security, communications, camp design and an SMS platform that Rudolph later tested with the innovation lab.
“Ben and Alice were attracted to the refugee project because of its focus on improving conditions for forced migrants,” said Cuéllar. “Both of them are brimming with intellectual curiosity, ability, and dedication, so it's no surprise that UNHCR has put them at the center of its innovation work."
The collaboration now extends far beyond CISAC. Cuéllar, CISAC visiting professor Jim Hathaway of the University of Michigan Law School, Roland Hsu of the Stanford Humanities Center and the NGO Asylum Access are convening a winter quarter working group on refugee rights. Stanford faculty will come from many departments to talk about the tension between providing emergency care and protecting refugee rights.
CISAC led the UNHCR to the Stanford Geospatial Center, where students are working on four mapping projects to help refugees, including an interactive map that displays the density for refugees seeking shelter in that conflict.
“Working with the UNHCR was truly a unique experience for us,” said Patricia Carbajales, geospatial manager at the Branner Earth Sciences Library who linked the students with the UNHCR advisers in Geneva and field offices around the world. “The students were completely engaged, understanding the importance that their projects had for UNHCR and, most importantly, for the refugees themselves.”
The popularity of the projects has led to a new class in the spring, “GIS for Good: Applications for GIS for International Development and Humanitarian Relief.”
Cuéllar and Elizabeth Gardner, associate director for partnerships and special projects at FSI, are working with UNHCR architects and the New York-based Ennead Architects Lab to develop new tools to expedite the complex process of laying out new refugee camps.
Stanford’s Haas Center for Public Service and the student-led Stanford in Government is making moves to permanently place interns or postgraduate fellows at UNHCR. FSI Senior Fellow Paul Wise, a professor of pediatrics at Stanford’s School of Medicine, will mentor that intern in the coming year.
Meanwhile, out in the field, Rudolph doesn’t know if his UNHCR experience has forever changed his career path. He may come back to the valley and pick up where he left off; he may continue his humanitarian work.
Either way, he says, “This work has really opened me up to a world of problems that are so vast it’s hard to grasp. It will be forever difficult to go back to my ignorant bliss.”
Ben Rudolph, center, with Sudanese refugees in a UNHCR refugee camp in Ethiopia, March 2013.
Stanford students Parth Bhakta, left, and Ben Rudolph, talk with Sudanese refugees at the UNHCR camp in Bambasi, on Ethiopia's eastern border with Sudan. Photo: Beth Duff-Brown
Children in rural Kenya are more susceptible to disease and death the farther away they live from clean drinking water, according to Stanford researchers.
In a survey of families in Asembo – a small farming community at the edge of Lake Victoria that has high rates of chronic diarrhea, child malnutrition and child death – a research team from the Center on Food Security and the Environment found that most people live just over a quarter-mile from clean water sources. About 200 feet closer to home are ponds and springs contaminated with E. coli bacteria. Sixty-six percent of families primarily use this contaminated surface water for drinking.
A child in Asembo, Kenya sits next to her family's water storage containers.
A child in Asembo, Kenya sits next to her family's water storage containers. Photo Credit: Amy Pickering
While water is essential for farming, collecting it is time-consuming and physically exhausting in remote places like Asembo. Previous research has shown that when families must travel long distances for water, child health suffers. The harder it is to collect, the less of it a family will use. A shortage of water for cooking and drinking compromises children’s nutrition and hydration. And it limits hand washing and bathing, making children more susceptible to disease. Quality and availability of water also varies widely from source to source, and the time required to collect water can force families to use dirtier, unimproved water sources that are closer to home.
In 2011, the FSE researchers partnered with the Centers for Disease Control Kenya Medical Research Institute (CDC-KEMRI), which was already conducting an extensive survey of household-level health indicators in the region. Combining resources with CDC-KEMRI allowed the team – led by FSE Director Rosamond Naylor, a professor of environmental earth system science, and Jenna Davis, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering – to use a robust set of data. The information covered about 3,000 households in a five kilometer radius and was collected on a bi-weekly basis for six months. In exploring the links between water, food and health in Asembo, FSE researchers first expanded the definition of water “access” to account for both physical distance and the quality of water sources.
Researchers take a child's measurements in Asembo, Kenya.
Researchers take a child's measurements in Asembo, Kenya. Photo Credit: Amy Pickering
Researchers then mapped the distance of each household from its nearest water source, and recorded whether the source was improved (such as a deep borewell) or unimproved (surface water like a pond, spring or shallow well). To get the most precise possible data on local water quality, the research team collected samples from each household’s water source and sent them to a local hospital lab for testing. Surveyors then collected data on each household’s water management practices, including water treatment. They measured agricultural output, dietary diversity, and perceived food insecurity, then recorded the weight and height measurements of each child in the household. Respondents also reported the frequency of recent cases of diarrheal disease among children of the household.
Results of the initial survey highlight sobering realities about water access in Asembo. Households in the survey reported average per capita water consumption of only 31 liters per day, including water used for cooking, drinking, hygiene and agriculture. The average walk time to the nearest water source was approximately 15 minutes. The average distance to the nearest improved source was 428 meters, whereas the average distance to unimproved surface water was 374 meters. Water quality tests confirmed that these sources, used by the majority of families, were highly contaminated with E. coli bacteria, while improved water sources were significantly cleaner. Thirty percent of children showed stunted growth, and 11 percent were underweight for their age.
A researcher collects a sample of stored water at a household in Asembo, Kenya.
A researcher collects a sample of stored water at a household in Asembo, Kenya. Photo Credit: Amy Pickering
Researchers found that close proximity to an abundant water source, regardless of quality, correlated with an increase in food production and diversity, as well as a lower hunger score. Having enough extra water for crop irrigation clearly improves children’s diets – particularly their access to the micronutrients essential for normal physical and cognitive development – and helps them resist disease. Households further from water sources reported lower and less diverse crop yields, as well as poorer child health indicators. Quality was also an important factor, as households with access to clean, improved water reported better child health outcomes than those relying on contaminated surface water.
The ultimate goal of the project, “Rural health and development at the food-water nexus” is to design interventions and policy incentives that help people absorb nutrients in environments where food and water are limited and disease is prevalent. In the next stage of the project, researchers will focus on links between water access and the progression of HIV, and will also investigate how improved diets from better water access can impact household income.
About the Stanford Research Team:
Jenna Davis is Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Higgins-Magid Faculty Senior Fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, and an affiliate of the Center on Food Security and the Environment. Rosamond Naylor is the Director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment, Professor of Environmental Earth System Science, and the William Wrigley Senior Fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute. Eran Bendavid is an infectious diseases physician and Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine, as well as an affiliate of the Center on Food Security and the Environment and the Stanford Health Policy center. Amy Pickering is a lecturer in the School of Earth Sciences, and a research associate in Civil and Environmental Engineering, the Woods Institute for the Environment, and the Center on Food Security and the Environment. Glwadys Gbetibouo is a postdoctoral scholar at the Center on Food Security and the Environment. Katrina ole-MoiYoi is a Ph.D. student at the Center on Food Security and the Environment.
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Researchers take a child's measurements in Asembo, Kenya.
Vincent Barletta, Stanford associate professor of Iberian and Latin American Cultures, and his co-editors/co-translators Mark L. Bajus and Cici Malik, present a comparative approach to Iberian lyrical poetry.
For more infomation, please visit the publication's webpage by clicking on the book title below.
In hopes of increasing awareness that could minimize sexual health risks, the team will promote a mobile health counseling service, which will enable young people in Nairobi’s Mathare slums to receive private and reliable answers from health counselors through text messaging.
Program on Global Justice
Encina Hall West, Room 404
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305
(650) 723-0256
0
jcohen57@stanford.edu
Marta Sutton Weeks Professor of Ethics in Society, and Professor of Political Science, Philosophy, and Law
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MA, PhD
Joshua Cohen is a professor of law, political science, and philosophy at Stanford University, where he also teaches at the d.school and helps to coordinate the Program on Liberation Technology. A political theorist trained in philosophy, Cohen has written extensively on issues of democratic theory—particularly deliberative democracy and the implications for personal liberty, freedom of expression, and campaign finance—and global justice. Cohen is author of On Democracy (1983, with Joel Rogers); Associations and Democracy (1995, with Joel Rogers); Philosophy, Politics, Democracy (2010); The Arc of the Moral Universe and Other Essays (2011); and Rousseau: A Free Community of Equals (2011). Since 1991, he has been editor of Boston Review, a bi-monthly magazine of political, cultural, and literary ideas. Cohen is currently a member of the faculty of Apple University.
This paper offers a systematic account of political regime changes in Sub-Saharan Africa from 1996-2010. Are democratic transition processes a variance of a singular domestic politico-institutional model (political protest, political mobilization, and democratization), as Michael Bratton and Nicolas van de Walle (1997) claimed, or do other variables matter in democratic transition processes? What conditions create and maintain democracy in Sub-Saharan Africa? Combining qualitative and quantitative methods, this paper examines the development of Sub-Saharan African political regimes, contrasting the pre and post-Cold War periods (1960-1989 and 1996-2010) to understand their determinants. It focuses on the new transformations observed since the beginning of the twenty-first century, assessing recent regime history and examining the factors (political, governance, economic and international) that have contributed to democratic development in some states and autocracy in others. The findings show that democratic transitions are not only the variance of the Bratton and Van de Walle model, which downplays economic and international variables. The process is mainly, but not always, determined by domestic politico-institutional factors. Foreign intervention and economic conditions are also important determinants of democratization in Sub-Saharan Africa in the post-Cold War era.
Vietnamese news accounts of labor-management conflicts, including strikes, and even reports of owners fleeing their factories raise potent questions about labor activism in light of this self-proclaimed socialist country’s engagement in the global market system since the late 1980s. In explaining Vietnamese labor resistance, how important are matters of cultural identity (such as native-place, gender, ethnicity, and religion) in different historical contexts? How does labor mobilization occur and develop? How does it foster “class moments” in times of crisis? What types of "flexible protests" have been used by workers to fight for their rights and dignity, and how effective are they?
Based on her just-published book, Ties that Bind: Cultural Identity, Class, and Law in Vietnam's Labor Resistance, Prof. Trần will highlight labor activism since French colonial rule in order to understand labor issues and actions in Vietnam today. Her analysis will focus on labor-management-state relations, especially with key foreign investors/managers (such as from Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong) and ethnic Chinese born and raised in Vietnam. She will convey the voices and ideas of workers, organizers, journalists, and officials and explain how migrant workers seek to empower themselves using cultural resources and appeals to state media and the rule of law. Copies of her book will be available for sale at her talk.
Prof. Trần's current research on global south-south labor migration focuses on Vietnamese migrants working in Malaysia and returning to Vietnam. In 2008 she was a Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Distinguished Fellow on Southeast Asia. Her co-authored 2012 book, Corporate Social Responsibility and Competitiveness for SMEs in Developing Countries: South Africa and Vietnam, compared the experiences of small-and-medium enterprises in these two countries. Her many other writings include (as co-editor and author) Reaching for the Dream: Challenges of Sustainable Development in Vietnam (2004). She earned her PhD in Political Economy and Public Policy at the University of Southern California in 1996 and an MA in Developmental Economics at USC in 1991.
Copies of Ties that Bind: Cultural Identity, Class, and Law in Vietnam's Labor Resistance will be available for signing and sale by the author following her talk.
Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
(831) 582-3753
(650) 723-6530
0
angie_tran@csumb.edu
Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Distinguished Fellow on Southeast Asia
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MA, PhD
Angie Ngoc Trần is a professor in the Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Global Studies at California State University, Monterey Bay (CSUMB). Her plan as the 2008 Lee Kong Chian National University of Singapore-Stanford University Distinguished Fellow is to complete a book manuscript on labor-capital relations in Vietnam that highlights how different identities of investors and owners—shaped by government policies, ethnicity, characteristics of investment, and the role they played in global flexible production—affect workers’ conditions, consciousness, and collective action differently.
Tran spent May-July 2008 at Stanford and will return to campus for the second half of November 2008. She will share the results of her project in a public seminar at Stanford under SEAF auspices on November 17 2008.
Prof. Trần’s many publications include “Contesting ‘Flexibility’: Networks of Place, Gender, and Class in Vietnamese Workers’ Resistance,” in Taking Southeast Asia to Market (2008); “Alternatives to ‘Race to the Bottom’ in Vietnam: Minimum Wage Strikes and Their Aftermath,” Labor Studies Journal (December 2007); “The Third Sleeve: Emerging Labor Newspapers and the Response of Labor Unions and the State to Workers’ Resistance in Vietnam,” Labor Studies Journal (September 2007); and (as co-editor and author) Reaching for the Dream: Challenges of Sustainable Development in Vietnam (2004). She received her Ph.D. in Political Economy and Public Policy at the University of Southern California in 1996 and an M.A. in Developmental Economics at USC in 1991.
Angie Ngoc Tran
Professor of Political Economy
Speaker
California State University-Monterey Bay
The HIV/AIDS pandemic has decimated family life in Africa. This project focused on the welfare of the “orphaned-elderly” – a class of elderly dependents whose traditional care-giving arrangements have collapsed. The authors presented their findings in January 2008. A manuscript, “HIV and Africa’s ‘Orphaned Elderly,’” was published in British Medical Journal. Another manuscript entitled, “The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief in Africa: An Evaluation of Outcomes” was published in Annals of Internal Medicine.
The overall goal of this project was to estimate the relationship between the HIV epidemic in Africa and mortality patterns of Africa's elderly. The lead investigator audited Professor Shripad Tuljapurkar's demography class to have a more nuanced understanding of the methods involved in mortality estimations. He identified the data sources to be used in this project, and employed the services of a programmer at Stanford's Quantitative Sciences Unit, Jessica Kubo, to help with the data analysis. They revised the proposed approach after they discovered a new source of data t
This seed grant aimed to verify the ages of elderly individuals in a sample of Khomani San “Bushmen” from South Africa. With verified data, the researchers then aim to identify genetic loci associated with longevity in their sample. In November 2011, the researchers returned to South Africa and conducted follow-up interviews with 60 subjects; additionally they were able to enroll 41 new subjects in the study for a total of 101 subjects. They confirmed that half of their sample exceeded 50 years of age (up to age 98).
Alice Bosley crossing a river near the Dollo Ado UNHCR refugee camp in Ethiopia.
Ben Rudolph, center, with Sudanese refugees in a UNHCR refugee camp in Ethiopia, March 2013.
A child in Asembo, Kenya sits next to her family's water storage containers.
Researchers take a child's measurements in Asembo, Kenya.
A researcher collects a sample of stored water at a household in Asembo, Kenya.
