THE FUTURE OF HUMAN RIGHTS: GLOBAL TECHNIQUES SECURING LOCAL IMPACT Friday, 16 December 2011 Westbury Hotel, Grafton Street, Dublin 9am 1pm
HOSSAM BAHGAT KEYNOTE Director, Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) Hossam Bahgat is the founder and director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), a Cairo-based independent human rights organization which seeks to protect and promote the personal rights and freedoms of individuals and communities. Since 2002, the EIPR has used research, advocacy and litigation to promote and defend the rights to privacy, religious freedom, health, and bodily integrity. With training in political science and international human rights law, Bahgat is also the vice president of the Egyptian Association against Torture, an Advisory Board member of Egypt s New Woman Foundation, a Board member of the International Network for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Fund for Global Human Rights. Bahgat is the recipient of 2010 Alison Des Forges Award for Extraordinary Activism from Human Rights Watch. www.eipr.org/en/ MARK KELLY CHAIR Director, Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) Mark Kelly is an international human rights lawyer. He is Director of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL), Ireland s independent human rights watchdog, which was founded in 1976 by Mary Robinson and others. Previously, he founded the independent consultancy firm Human Rights Consultants (HRC). His HRC clients included the United Nations, the European Union, the Council of Europe, the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and international and Irish non-governmental organisations. Before founding HRC, he lived in Strasbourg for ten years, where he worked as Head of Unit in the Secretariat of the Council of Europe s European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT). In that role, he supervised the CPT s human rights monitoring and reporting activities in relation to more than a dozen Council of Europe member States, including Ireland. Educated at the Universities of Dundee, Edinburgh and Cambridge, Mark has lectured and published extensively in the areas of human rights and criminal justice, the prevention of ill-treatment and combating racism. He also lectures on the European Masters Degree in Human Rights and Democratisation (European Inter-University Centre (EUIC), at Venice). www.iccl.ie
SPEAKERS ANTHONY ROMERO Executive Director, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Anthony D. Romero is the Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, America s premier defender of liberty and individual freedom. He took the helm of the organization just four days before the September 11, 2001 attacks. Shortly afterward, the ACLU launched its national Safe and Free campaign to protect basic freedoms during a time of crisis, achieving court victories on the Patriot Act, uncovering thousands of pages of documents detailing the torture and abuse of detainees in U.S. custody, and filing the first successful legal challenge to the Bush administration s illegal NSA spying program. Romero also led the ACLU in establishing the John Adams Project, a joint effort with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers to assist the under-resourced military defense lawyers in the Guantánamo military commissions. Since the election of Barack Obama and the change in administrations, Romero has been leading the ACLU in its fight to restore civil liberties, including pushing for accountability for torture committed under the Bush administration, fighting the practice of indefinite detention without charge or trial and challenging the excessive use of the state secrets privilege to block lawsuits over national security abuses. Romero is the ACLU s sixth executive director, and the first Latino and openly gay man to serve in that capacity. In 2005, Romero was named one of Time Magazine s 25 Most Influential Hispanics in America, and has received dozens of public service awards and an honorary doctorate from the City University of New York School of Law. He is a graduate of Stanford University Law School and Princeton University s Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy and International Affairs. He is a member of the New York Bar Association and has sat on numerous nonprofit boards. www.aclu.org #icclconf
SHAMI CHAKRABARTI Director, Liberty Shami Chakrabarti has been Director of Liberty (The National Council for Civil Liberties) since September 2003. Shami first joined Liberty as In-House Counsel on 10 September 2001. She became heavily involved in its engagement with the War on Terror and with the defense and promotion of human rights values in Parliament, the Courts and wider society. A Barrister by background, she was called to the Bar in 1994 and worked as a lawyer in the Home Office from 1996 until 2001 for Governments of both persuasions. Since becoming Liberty s Director she has written, spoken and broadcast widely on the importance of the post-ww2 human rights framework as an essential component of a democratic society. She is Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University, a Governor of the British Film Institute, and a Visiting Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford in addition to being a Master of the Bench of Middle Temple. She was recently invited to be one of 6 independent assessors advising Lord Justice Leveson in his Public Inquiry into the Culture, Practice and Ethics of the UK Press. www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk HAGAI EL-AD Executive Director, Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) Hagai El-Ad joined ACRI as Executive Director in July 2008. He brings to ACRI extensive experience as a leader in the field of human rights, in Israel and abroad. Most recently, he served as the first executive director of the Jerusalem Open House (JOH), the community and advocacy center for the city s LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) community. During his tenure there, he advanced the recognition of the LGBT community as a distinct and legitimate group within Israeli society, and prominently positioned JOH among Israel s leading social change NGOs. In June 2002, he launched what has now become Jerusalem s Annual Pride and Tolerance March. Mr. El-Ad has published numerous articles on Arab-Jewish relations and equality in Israel, LGBT rights, and more, in Haaretz, The Jerusalem Post, ynet.co.il, NRG.co.il, the Washington Blade, the Huffington Post, and elsewhere. Most recently he contributed a chapter to the book, Where, Here: Language, Identity, Place. Born in Haifa, Mr. El-Ad studied at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for astrophysics for three years (1997-2000) as a pre-doctoral fellow. Prior to that, he completed his B.Sc. (Special Honors Program, 1994) and M.Sc. (Astrophysics, 1996) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. While a student at the Hebrew University Mr. El-Ad served as the Chairperson of The Other 10%, the school s Gay and Lesbian Student Union. www.acri.org.il/en/
RESPONDENTS DARA ROBINSON Partner, Sheehan&Partners, Solicitors Dara Robinson is qualified, and has practised, as a solicitor in both England and Ireland. He is a partner in the Dublin firm of Sheehan and Partners. He is a long standing member, and former Chair, of the Criminal Law committee of the Law Society. He has extensive experience of large-scale civil litigation involving mental health and prison law issues, including at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, and has also been involved in many major criminal cases. He has written, taught and lectured for many years on human rights-related topics, and is a co-author of the OUP/Law Society joint publication on Human Rights Law www.sheehanandpartners.ie Dr. JOANNA MCMINN Chair, Equality and Rights Alliance (ERA) Joanna McMinn was one of the founding members of the Equality and Rights Alliance in 2008, and has chaired the Steering Committee up to the present time. A former Director of the National Women s Council of Ireland, from 2001-2009, Joanna has been a feminist activist in the voluntary and community sector since 1981. She was the Coordinator of the Women s Education Project, and Director of the Women s Resource and Development Agency in Belfast until 1994. From 1994-2000, Joanna worked as an independent consultant on organisational development for the community and voluntary sectors in Ireland, and during this time completed a doctoral thesis in the Equality Studies Centre on women s community education, social justice and equality for women in Ireland, north and south. www.eracampaign.org DEIRDRE DUFFY UPR Project Manager, Irish Council for Civil Liberties Deirdre Duffy joined the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) as Research and Policy Officer in 2007. In addition to her wider role, she is the project manager for the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) campaign, Your Rights Right Now, on behalf of the ICCL. She is the author of several reports and papers on human rights, equality and justice issues, including Taking Liberties: The Human Rights Implications of the Balance in the Criminal Law Review Group Report and A Better Deal: The Human Rights of Victims in the Criminal Justice System. She holds an LLM in Human Rights Law and International Criminal Law from the University of Edinburgh and an MSc in Human Rights and Politics from University College Dublin. She is a barrister and has previously worked as a policy advisor with the Scottish Executive Justice Department and as a legal researcher in the Houses of the Oireachtas. www.iccl.ie/ www.rightsnow.ie
RUNNING ORDER INTRODUCTION STRATEGIC LITIGATION CAMPAIGNING AND ADVOCACY Mark Kelly, Director, Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) Prison Litigation in the United States Anthony Romero, Executive Director, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Respondent Dara Robinson, Partner, Sheehan& Partners, Solicitors Engaging Public Opinion to Combat Regressive Proposals Shami Chakrabarti, Director, Liberty Respondent Joanna McMinn, Chair, Equality and Rights Alliance (ERA) QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS COFFEE BREAK BUILDING EFFECTIVE COALITIONS SCREENING OF SHORT DOCUMENTARY Building Effective Coalitions Hagai El-Ad, Executive Director, Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) Respondent Deirdre Duffy, UPR Project Manager, Irish Council for Civil Liberties Ireland s Universal Periodic Review QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS KEYNOTE CLOSE Human Rights and the Arab Spring Lessons from Egypt Hossam Bahgat, Director, Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) Mark Kelly, ICCL LUNCH FOR ALL PARTICIPANTS Irish Council for Civil Liberties 9-13 Blackhall Place Dublin 7 www.iccl.ie