The Child Rights Working Group Is Formulating the 2008 Spring Conference on “The Child Right to Participation” in early April.
2008 Conference Info NEW!
Please contact us at if you would like to help out or have any questions.
Past Events
• Friday, Dec. 7th, 2007: Human Rights Day at the Human Rights High School in Brooklyn, NY; 8:30 pm - 1:30 pm – with the Human Rights Working Group
Travel to Brooklyn to teach a human rights lesson to students at the Human Rights High School
• Monday, Dec. 3rd, 2007: Brown Bag with IRC; 12:30 pm - 1:30 pm, Glass Room, Health Sciences Library, Mailman School of Public Health, Room 104
Join Katherine Haxall, Child Survival and Health and Nina Weisenhorn, Child and Youth Protection and Development Unit - Education Department, of the International Rescue Committee to discuss issues surrounding the most vulnerable children in times of conflict and how to secure their health and protection. Also, take a chance to ask Katherine and Nina about how they came into their fields and what its like to work for the IRC.
Spring 2007 Conference:
The Child Right to Protection Realized:
Best Practices and Lessons Learned
~A week long series of Events on the Child Right to Protection~
• Monday, April 9th, 2007: "The Rights of Children at Times of War - An Evening with Ishmael Beah" 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm, Jerome Greene Hall, Columbia Law School, Room 104
Ishmael Beah, author of recently published "A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier" and former child soldier in Sierra Leone, will speak about his experience, the impact of war on children’s psychosocial well-being and Human Rights law.
• Tuesday, April 10th, 2007: "Brown Bag Lunch with Jimmie Briggs" 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm, SIPA Room 1134
Join Journalist Jimmie Briggs, author of "Innocents Lost: When Child Soldiers Go to War" to discuss issues around child soldiers and gender-based violence.
• Wednesday, April 11th, 2007: "An Evening of Film" with Red Light Children, WITNESS and Cambodia Project New Hope 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm, Hamilton Hall Room 717
Wednesday evening, 6-8PM in Hamilton Hall 717, we will feature three films on child rights: Red Light Children and Guy Jacobson will be previewing a new film series exposing child sexploitation, Tiara Delgado's film "Compassion and Controversy" on the US Moratorium on Cambodian adoption which addresses why American are banned from adopting orphans due to child trafficking allegations, and WITNESS film "System Failure" which exposes the horrific conditions and human rights violations endemic to the California Youth Authority.
• Thursday, April 12 th: Conference on “The Child Right to Protection Realized: Best Practices and Lessons Learned” 12:45pm – 6:30, Jerome Greene Hall, Room 106, Law School
Child Rights Conference Details
12:45pm - 6:30 pm, Thursday, April 12th, 2007
at the Columbia Law School, Jerome Greene Hall, Room 106
"The Child Right to Protection Realized: Best Practices and Lessons Learned" Conference at Columbia University provides an opportunity to focus on what steps have been taken in the successful protection of children in each of our three panel topics, and what lessons have been learned.
Hosted by Child Rights Working Group - a cross-campus network of graduate and undergraduate programs and schools dedicated to furthering discussion and knowledge on child rights. Students involved in the Child Rights Working Group come from the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia School of Law, Mailman School of Public Health, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Barnard College, Columbia College, the School of General Studies, the School of Social Work and Teacher’s College.
Program of Events
Keynote: Jane Spinak, 12:45 pm
Panel 1: Child Labor and Child Trafficking; 1:00 – 2:30pm
Moderated by Karin Landgren , Chief of Child Protection at UNICEF.
Panelists include: Prof. Anthony Ewing of Columbia Law School; Carol Smolenski, Executive Director of ECPAT-USA, End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes; Taina Bien-Aimé, Executive Director of Equality Now.
~Half Hour for Networking with Coffee, Tea and Cookies~
Panel 2: Child Abuse and Violence against Children; 3:00 – 4:30pm
Moderated by Michael MacKenzie , Assistant Professor at the School of Social Work.
Panelists include: Mie Lewis , the Aryeh Neier Fellow at Human Rights Watch and ACLU, and author of, "Custody and Control: Conditions of Confinement in New York’s Juvenile Prisons for Girls"; Justin Pasquariello , Executive Director and Founder, Adoption and Foster Care Mentoring; Stella Schuhmacher, Programme Officer, Child Protection, UNICEF; Liz Sullivan , Director, Right to Education Program, National Economic and Social Rights Initiative (NESRI).
~Half Hour for Networking with Coffee, Tea and Cookies~
Panel 3: Children in Complex Emergencies; 5:00 – 6:30 pm
Moderated by Prof. Alastair Ager of the Mailman School of Public Health.
Panelists include: Michael Wessells , Professor of Clinical Population and Family Health, Senior Child Protection Specialist for Christian Children’s Fund and author of Child Soldiers: Stolen Childhood; David Rosen , Professor of Anthropology, Becton College of Arts and Sciences and author of Armies of the Young: Child Soldiers in War and Terrorism; Ilene Cohn, Chief of Policy, Information and Resource Mobilization with the UN Mine Action Service; Stephen Hanmer, Child Protection Technical Advisor, The International Rescue Committee.
~Reception to follow~
For all enquiries please email:
Past Sponsors include:
The Center for the Study of Human Rights
Human Rights Program (SIPA)
Undergraduate Human Rights Program ( Columbia College)
Human Rights Working Group (SIPA)
Human Rights Institute ( Law School)
The Center for Public Interest Law ( Law School)
Public Health for Reproductive Freedom (Mailman)
Black and Latino Student Caucus (Mailman)
Child Survival (Mailman)
Forced Migration Program/Child Protection Center (Mailman)
Mailman Public Health Student Government
Human Rights Law Clinic ( Law School)
African Law Students Association ( Law School)
Towards Reconciliation
Global Justice
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Teacher’s College
Columbia Global Solutions
The Cambodia Project
Department of Population and Family Health
Columbia UNICEF
Global Health Forum
Virtue Foundation
Mailman School of Public Health
Columbia Students for International Service
The Student Senate at Teacher's College
The Society for International Education at Teacher's College
The Barnard Center for Research on Women