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Abstract
The framework of "LGBT rights" can be critiqued as challenging tradition or as culturally specific, yet at the same time, it can be essential to one's sense of identity and justice.  Where can the discourse of "public health" help overcome barriers for LGBT people, both within the right to health and beyond? What are the limits to using public health to talk about human rights, LGBT or otherwise?  What are the dangers of conflating these distinct areas of concern?  We will explore these questions and focus on how academics and activists can most effectively navigate challenges to benefit both public health and LGBT rights.

Jessica Stern is the Executive Director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. As the first researcher on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) human rights at Human Rights Watch, she conducted fact-finding investigations and advocacy around sexual orientation and gender identity in countries including Iran, Kyrgyzstan, South Africa, and the United Arab Emirates. As a Ralph Bunche Fellow at Amnesty International, she documented police brutality for what became its landmark report on police brutality in LGBT communities in the U.S., “Stonewalled.” She was a founding collective member and co-coordinator of Bluestockings, then New York’s only women’s bookstore. She has campaigned extensively for women’s rights, LGBT rights, and economic justice with the Center for Constitutional Rights, Control Ciudadano, the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, and the Urban Justice Center. She holds a masters degree in human rights from the London School of Economics. She is frequently quoted in the Mail & Guardian, Al Jazeera English, the Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France Presse, Deutsche Welle, Voice of America, The Guardian and The BBC.

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Jessica Stern Executive Director Speaker International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission
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Hon.Agnes Binagwaho has served as Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Health in Rwanda since October 2008. She specialized in emergency pediatrics, neonatology, and the treatment of HIV/AIDS; and she chairs the Rwandan Pediatric Society. From 1986 to 2002, she practiced medicine in public hospitals in Rwanda and several other countries before joining Rwanda's National AIDS Control Commission as Executive Secretary. She is a member of the Editorial Board of Public Library of Science, and the Harvard University Health and Human Rights Journal. Dr. Binagwaho co‐chaired the Millennium Development Goal Project Task Force on HIV/AIDS and Access to Essential Medicines for the Secretary‐General of the United Nations under the leadership of Professor Jeffrey Sachs. She was the global co‐chair of the Joint Learning Initiative on Children and HIV/AIDS. In addition to her medical degree and Master in Peadiatry, she received an Honorary Doctor of Sciences from Dartmouth College. Dr. Binagwaho serves as a visiting lecturer in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine of Harvard Medical School.

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Room 205
Stanford University

Hon. Agnes Binagwaho Minister of Health Speaker Rwanda
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Zainab Hawa Bangura of Sierra Leone is Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict at the level of Under-Secretary-General at the United Nations.

Prior to this appointment, Ms. Bangura was the Minister of Health and Sanitation for the Government of Sierra Leone, and brings to the position over 20 years of policy, diplomatic and practical experience in the field of governance, conflict resolution and reconciliation in Africa. She was previously the second female Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, including Chief Adviser and Spokesperson of the President on bilateral and international issues. Ms. Bangura has been instrumental in developing national programmes on affordable health, advocating for the elimination of genital mutilation, managing the country’s Peace Building Commission and contributing to the multilateral and bilateral relations with the international community. She is experienced in meeting with interlocutors in diverse situations, including rebel groups, and familiar in dealing with State and non-State actors relevant to issues of sexual violence while fighting corruption and impunity.

Ms. Bangura has on-the-ground experience with peacekeeping operations from within the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), where she was responsible for the management of the largest civilian component of the Mission, including promoting capacity-building of government institutions and community reconciliation. She is an experienced results-driven civil society, human and women’s rights campaigner and democracy activist, notably as Executive Director of the National Accountability Groups, Chair and Co-founder of the Movement for Progress Party of Sierra Leone, as well as Coordinator and Co-founder of the Campaign for Good Governance.

Ms. Bangura is a former fellow of the Chartered Insurance Institute of London, possessing Diplomas in Insurance Management from the City University Business School of London and Nottingham University. She received her Bachelor of Arts from the Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone.

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Zainab Bangura United Nations Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict Speaker
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Abstract
The scope and complexity of global health can be overwhelming, making it difficult to form an inspiring and unified vision for the future. Mired in this complexity, the international community defines success disease by disease‹without a clear picture of what fundamental reform would actually look like. If the aspiration of global health with justice is the right goal, then answering three simple questions may pierce the haze.

First, what would global health look like? That is, given optimal priority-setting, funding, and implementation, to what level of health should we aspire, and with what provision of health-related services? Posing these three elementary questions, of course, oversimplifies a field that is fraught with tensions and trade offs. But I want to imagine a more ideal future for world health, with bold proposals to get there. After thinking about these three basic questions, I turn to an idea for innovative global governance for health‹a Framework Convention on Global Health.

Second, what would global health with justice look like? Global health seeks to improve all the major indicators of health, such as infant and maternal mortality and longevity. Global health with justice, however, requires that we look beyond improved health outcomes for the population as a whole. Although overall population health is vitally important, justice requires a significant reduction in health disparities between the well-off and the poor. Societies that achieve high levels of health and longevity for most, while the poor and marginalized die young, do not comport with social justice.

Third, what would it take to achieve global health with justice? That is, once we clearly state the goal, and meaning, of global health with justice, what concrete steps are required to reach this ambitious objective? This raises fundamental challenges, intellectually and operationally, as the response cannot be limited to ever-greater resources, but must also involve improved governance‹at the country and international level and across multiple sectors.

Lawrence O. Gostin is University Professor, Georgetown University’s highest academic rank conferred by the University President. Prof. Gostin directs the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law and was the Founding O’Neill Chair in Global Health Law. He served as Associate Dean for Research at Georgetown Law from 2004 to 2008. He is Professor of Medicine at Georgetown University, Professor of Public Health at the Johns Hopkins University, and Director of the Center for Law & the Public’s Health at Johns Hopkins and Georgetown Universities.

 Prof. Gostin holds a number of international academic professorial appointments: Visiting Professor (Faculty of Medical Sciences) and Research Fellow (Centre for Socio-Legal Studies) at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom; the Claude Leon Foundation Distinguished Scholar and Visiting Professor at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa; and the Miegunyah Distinguished Visiting Fellow and Founding Fellow of the Centre for Advanced Studies (Trinity College), University of Melbourne. Prof. Gostin serves as Secretary and a member of the Governing Board of Directors of the Consortium of Universities for Global Health.

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Lawrence O. Gostin O'Neill Professor in Global Health Law Speaker Georgetown University
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**** PLEASE NOTE CHANGE OF SPEAKER***

Dr. Susan Kasedde currently serves as Senior Advisor and Team Leader on HIV and Adolescents for UNICEF based in New York since November 2009. In this role, she has contributed towards global level evidence generation, technical guidance development, advocacy, global partnership development, and technical assistance towards the global response towards HIV prevention, treatment and care in adolescents aged 10 - 19. Since 2011, on behalf of UNICEF, Susan has coordinated a series of efforts including documentation of global practices in the care of adolescents living with HIV; mathematical modeling with the Futures Institute to assess the impact and cost of scale up of proven high impact HIV prevention, treatment and care interventions within a holistic response, on new HIV infections and AIDS deaths in adolescents; and a systematic review with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine to confirm evidence on effective approaches for programming to reduce HIV infection, illness and death in adolescents. This work has contributed to stronger advocacy and technical guidelines for programming for adolescents, a group of children previously largely neglected. In 2013, the documentation on adolescents living with HIV was a major contribution to the new WHO guidelines on HIV testing and counseling and care in adolescents. The impact modeling and systematic review are among a series of key papers that will be released in a special supplement on HIV prevention, treatment and care in adolescents at the International AIDS Society Conference in Melbourne, Australia in 2014.

 

 Susan joined UNICEF having served since 2007 as Regional Adviser with the UNAIDS Regional Office for Eastern & Southern Africa. In that role, she was responsible for coordinating analytic work on the epidemic and response and modes of HIV transmission in several high HIV burden countries, working extensively with government teams and partners in the highest HIV burden countries in the world to use an incidence model to predict the next 1000 new HIV infections and assess alignment of national strategies with the national epidemic. Susan has over 18 years of experience working on adolescents sexual and reproductive health of which 16 of those have been focused on HIV in adolescents. Susan holds a doctorate in Epidemiology and Population Health from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, a Masters degree in Public Health from Boston University and Bachelors degrees in Biomedical Science and French. Susan is a national of Uganda and speaks English and French.

Building 200 (History Corner)
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Susan Kasedde Senior Advisor and Team Leader on HIV and Adolescents Speaker UNICEF
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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.            

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Joe Amon Director of Health and Human Rights Speaker Human Rights Watch
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Abstract: 

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.

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*** Change of Speaker***

Abstract
The global spread of mobile phones has led to several technology explorations for social impact. How can we design human-centered solutions for socio-economic development that are locally relevant and meaningful, ensuring they get used and have impact? In this talk, I will present two research studies from designing and deploying technologies for social impact in India and Ghana. In the first half, I will discuss how we designed and deployed a phone audio broadcasting system for microfinance and health reminders for a urban sex worker community in India (work with Microsoft Research India). I'll discuss how we built trust, protected privacy, built design principles based on our ethnographic research, and share our lessons learned from designing and evaluating the system for a hard-to-reach user group.
 
In the second half, I will discuss the design and evaluation of a mobile Internet tool to make data usage information transparent, called SmartBrowse (work with Google.org). In emerging economies, mobile data is on the rise, but is particularly expensive. I'll share our design journey from creating mobile data transparency concepts to deploying and evaluating the tool with 300 Android users for 10 weeks in a university in Ghana, including findings such as how SmartBrowse led to a significant reduction in Internet credit spend and increased online activity, and lessons learned from running a large-scale trial.
 
 
Nithya Sambasivan is a User Experience Researcher at Google.org, where she researches technologies for social impact. Nithya has a Ph.D in Informatics from University of California, Irvine; her dissertation focussed on researching and designing human-centered technologies for socio-economic development among slum communities, sex workers and microenterprises. She also has a Masters in Human Computer Interaction from Georgia Institute of Technology and has interned at Microsoft Research India, IBM Watson Research and Nokia Research Center. 


 

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Nithya Sambasivan User Experience Researcher Speaker Google. org.
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This event is being presented in partnership with CDDRL, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Hoover Institution, and a student led movement to end atrocities at Stanford (STAND).

Abstract:

Sixty-eight years after the Holocaust, governments continue to struggle with preventing genocide and mass atrocities. In 2005, United Nations member states agreed that nations share a responsibility to protect their citizens from genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing. Join us for a discussion about how the responsibility to protect (or R2P) has been applied in recent crises.

 

Speakers bio:

Richard Williamson is a nonresident senior fellow in Foreign Policy at Brookings and a principal in the consulting firm Salisbury Strategies LLP. His work focuses on human rights, multilateral diplomacy, nuclear nonproliferation and post-conflict reconstruction. Prior to those positions, Mr. Williamson served as U.S. special envoy to Sudan, under President George W. Bush. Earlier in the Bush administration, Mr. Williamson, who has broad foreign policy and negotiating experience, served as ambassador to the United Nations for Special Political Affairs, and as ambassador to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. Previously, Mr. Williamson served in several other senior foreign policy positions under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, including as assistant secretary of state for international organizations at the Department of State, and as an assistant to the president for intergovernmental affairs in the White House.

Michael Abramowitz is director of the Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. He joined the Museum in 2009 after nearly 25 years at the Washington Post, where he served as White House correspondent and previously as national editor, helping supervise coverage of national politics, the federal government, social policy, and national security. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a non-resident fellow of the German Marshall Fund. He was also a media fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Tod Lindberg is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, based in Hoover’s Washington, DC, office. His areas of research are political theory, international relations, national security policy, and US politics. 

Lindberg is a contributing editor to the Weekly Standard and an adjunct associate professor at Georgetown University, where he teaches in the School of Foreign Service. From 1999 until it ceased publication in 2013, he was editor of the bimonthly journal Policy Review.

In 2007–8, Lindberg served as head of the expert group on international norms and institutions of the Genocide Prevention Task Force, a joint project of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the American Academy of Diplomacy, and the U.S. Institute of Peace. In 2005, Lindberg was the coordinator for the group Preventing and Responding to Genocide and Major Human Rights Abuses for the United States Institute of Peace's Task Force on the United Nations. He was a member of the Steering Committee of the Princeton Project on National Security, for which he served as cochair of the working group on anti-Americanism. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Lina Khatib is the co-founding Head of the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. She joined Stanford University in 2010 from the University of London where she was an Associate Professor. Her research is firmly interdisciplinary and focuses on the intersections of politics, media, and social factors in relation to the politics of the Middle East. She is also a consultant on Middle East politics and media and has published widely on topics such as new media and Islamism, US public diplomacy towards the Middle East, and political media and conflict in the Arab world, as well as on the political dynamics in Lebanon and Iran. She has an active interest in the link between track two dialogue and democratization policy. She is also a Research Associate at SOAS, University of London, and, from 2010-2012, was a Research Fellow at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School. 

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Bechtel Conference Center

Richard Williamson Senior fellow in Foreign Policy Speaker Brookings
Michael Abramowitz Director of the Center for the Prevention of Genocide Moderator U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
Tod Lindberg Research fellow at the Hoover Institution Speaker Stanford
Lina Khatib Program Manager Speaker Arab Reform and Democracy Program at CDDRL
Conferences
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Abstract:

In the coming decade new oil discoveries in Africa will leave fragile democracies vulnerable to corruption, patronage and rent seeking behavior. In a piece co-written in Foreign Affairs, CDDRL Director Larry Diamond and Research Associate Jack Mosbacher advocate a new scheme to directly distribute oil revenue to citizens in the form of taxable income. This oil-to-cash system would strengthen accountability and increase citizens ownership of state resources.

Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, where he directs the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. Diamond also serves as the Peter E. Haas Faculty Co-Director of the Haas Center for Public Service at Stanford. He is the founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy and also serves as Senior Consultant (and previously was co-director) at the International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy. During 2002-3, he served as a consultant to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has also advised and lectured to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other governmental and nongovernmental agencies dealing with governance and development. His latest book, The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World (Times Books, 2008), explores the sources of global democratic progress and stress and the prospects for future democratic expansion.

At Stanford University, Diamond is also professor by courtesy of political science and sociology. He teaches courses on comparative democratic development and post-conflict democracy building, and advises many Stanford students. In May 2007, he was named "Teacher of the Year" by the Associated Students of Stanford University for teaching that "transcends political and ideological barriers." At the June 2007 Commencement ceremony, Diamond was honored by Stanford University with the Dinkelspiel Award for Distinctive Contributions to Undergraduate Education. He was cited, inter alia, for fostering dialogue between Jewish and Muslim students; for "his inspired teaching and commitment to undergraduate education; for the example he sets as a scholar and public intellectual, sharing his passion for democratization, peaceful transitions, and the idea that each of us can contribute to making the world a better place; and for helping make Stanford an ideal place for undergraduates."

Jack Mosbacher is a Research Associate at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, where he works with Larry Diamond on democratization trends in Africa. A 2012 Stanford graduate, Jack participated in the Undergraduate Honors Program with the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. His thesis, "Bracing for the Boom: Translating Oil into Development in Uganda," won the Departmental Best Thesis Award, and his work has appeared in Foreign Affairs, The Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Quarterly.

 Please click on link to read article that appeared in Foreign Affairs: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/print/136843

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Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science and Sociology
diamond_encina_hall.png MA, PhD

Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also professor by courtesy of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford, where he lectures and teaches courses on democracy (including an online course on EdX). At the Hoover Institution, he co-leads the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and participates in the Project on the U.S., China, and the World. At FSI, he is among the core faculty of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, which he directed for six and a half years. He leads FSI’s Israel Studies Program and is a member of the Program on Arab Reform and Development. He also co-leads the Global Digital Policy Incubator, based at FSI’s Cyber Policy Center. He served for 32 years as founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.

Diamond’s research focuses on global trends affecting freedom and democracy and on U.S. and international policies to defend and advance democracy. His book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, analyzes the challenges confronting liberal democracy in the United States and around the world at this potential “hinge in history,” and offers an agenda for strengthening and defending democracy at home and abroad.  A paperback edition with a new preface was released by Penguin in April 2020. His other books include: In Search of Democracy (2016), The Spirit of Democracy (2008), Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (1999), Promoting Democracy in the 1990s (1995), and Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria (1989). He has edited or coedited more than fifty books, including China’s Influence and American Interests (2019, with Orville Schell), Silicon Triangle: The United States, China, Taiwan the Global Semiconductor Security (2023, with James O. Ellis Jr. and Orville Schell), and The Troubling State of India’s Democracy (2024, with Sumit Ganguly and Dinsha Mistree).

During 2002–03, Diamond served as a consultant to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report, Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has advised and lectured to universities and think tanks around the world, and to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other organizations dealing with governance and development. During the first three months of 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. His 2005 book, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, was one of the first books to critically analyze America's postwar engagement in Iraq.

Among Diamond’s other edited books are Democracy in Decline?; Democratization and Authoritarianism in the Arab World; Will China Democratize?; and Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy, all edited with Marc F. Plattner; and Politics and Culture in Contemporary Iran, with Abbas Milani. With Juan J. Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset, he edited the series, Democracy in Developing Countries, which helped to shape a new generation of comparative study of democratic development.

Download full-resolution headshot; photo credit: Rod Searcey.

Former Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Faculty Chair, Jan Koum Israel Studies Program
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Larry Diamond Director Speaker CDDRL
Jack Mosbacher Research Associate Speaker Stanford University
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