Speaker Bios

Pamela Merchant served as the Executive Director of the Center for Justice & Accountability for the past nine years.  CJA is the leading U.S- based organization pursuing international human rights abusers through litigation.  Ms. Merchant is a former federal prosecutor and has testified before Congress on human rights issues.  She currently serves on the Advisory Council for the ABA Center on Human Rights and is a Director of the Foundation for Sustainable Rule of Law Initiatives. Ms. Merchant received her B.A from Georgetown University and her J.D. from Boston College School of Law.

Kristin Linsley Myles is a litigation partner in the San Francisco office of Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP. Her practice has focused upon complex business litigation in a wide spectrum of matters.For many years Ms. Myles has been named among California's "Top Women Lawers" by the Daily Journal. SHe has been profiled by Law360 as a Female Powerbroker. Ms. Myles frequesntly writes and speaks on a range of issues, including the Alien Tort Statue, especially in light of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Kiobel.

Abstract

Much of the work done in international development is ineffective, non-sustainable and sometimes even harmful.  Habitat for Humanity International and other global NGOs are rightfully being challenged to undertake new strategies and work with new private and public sector partners to increase the effectiveness and the long-term sustainability of their efforts.  During this talk, I will share the framework of Habitat’s global work in seventy plus countries around the world and highlight how that work is changing and must continue to change to further its impact and Mission.

I will support the case made by others that human rights visionaries, policy makers, and advocates of the next generation must help shape a changing world to one where international development causes community-based priorities to be enabled and implemented based upon permanent and varied improvements in local capacity especially among vulnerable populations. This will require a new vocabulary, new timelines, new coalitions with new actors, new --- but not necessarily more -- resources and new metrics.

I will illustrate these issues in several contexts including Haiti, where past practices have had results ranging from disappointing to devastating but where new and exciting efforts are emerging and setting positive global standards.

Speaker Bio

Liz Blake retired in December 2014 after serving nearly nine years as Senior Vice President – Advocacy, Government Affairs & General Counsel for Habitat for Humanity International.  Prior to Habitat, Liz worked in the corporate world and in private law practice for 28 years.

At Habitat for Humanity, Liz created and led its Global Advocacy initiative, ran a global legal team and headed its government affairs office in Washington, D.C.  Liz traveled extensively in the developing world working on land rights, women’s inheritance rights, issues of secure tenure, women’s issues, and water/sanitation related issues.  Liz founded the Haiti Property Law Working Group working on land rights in Haiti and was also responsible for Habitat on the Hill, World Habitat Day events, and supported Habitat’s participation in the World Urban Forum, the World Bank Land and Poverty Conference and Prep Con for Habitat III.  Liz served as a founding member of the Board of MicroBuild and represented Habitat for Humanity on the boards of the National Housing Conference and the International Housing Coalition.

Liz continues to lead the Haiti Property Law Working Group including implementation of a land tenure grant from US AID.  Liz is on the board of the National Association of Realtors, the International Women’s Forum – Atlanta, the National Association of Corporate Directors – Atlanta and the Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta where she heads the Audit and Compliance Committee.  Liz is a director of Green Brick Partners, Inc. (NASDAQ).

Speaker Bio

Mark Lorey serves as Vice President for Child Development and Programme Effectiveness in World Vision International. The group that he leads provides global technical leadership for World Vision's work in education, child protection, child participation, gender, disability, peace building, urban programming, local partnering and advocacy, and other technical areas. Mark has worked with World Vision for more than a decade. He has previously been based in Malawi, South Africa, and Zambia and worked with Save the Children, USAID, and other agencies. He currently lives near Washington, DC with his wife and two daughters.

ABSTRACT

The Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi (Ciji) Foundation from Taiwan is perhaps one of the largest Buddhist charities in the Chinese world today. This talk traces how Tzu Chi developed under the “regime of civility” in Taiwan. The same regime also contributed to the recent controversies between Tzu Chi and the Aborigines. I argue that the tension between the Buddhist non-governmental organization and the Christian Aborigines has to do with the inequality under the regime of civility: on the one hand, the Aborigines have been marginalized as the “subject” of the civility campaign by the state; and, on the other hand, the same regime of civility is what allows the Buddhist charity to thrive in civil society. This talk raises the question whether civility could turn against civil society.

SPEAKER BIO

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C. Julia Huang is a Professor of Anthropology at National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan, and currently a Visiting Scholar at the Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford University. Huang has published articles in the Journal of Asian Studies, Ethnology, Positions, Nova Religio, the Eastern Buddhist, and the European Journal for East Asian Studies. Her book, Charisma and Compassion: Cheng Yen and the Buddhist Tzu Chi Movement (Harvard University Press, 2009) is an ethnography of a lay Buddhist movement that began as a tiny group in Taiwan and grew into an organization with ten million members worldwide. Huang has recently completed a book manuscript, The Social Life of Goodness: Religious Philanthropy in Chinese Societies (with Robert P. Weller and Keping Wu). She is currently working on a project on the Buddhist influences on cadaver donations for medical education in Taiwan.

This event is part of the Taiwan Democracy Project.