Abstract
Information is at the heart of human rights work, and the growing emphasis on evidence-based policymaking to support development and transition goals has changed the way human rights advocacy is constructed. As the human rights movement responds to new challenges, organizations monitoring and investigating human rights need the ability to understand and analyze large amounts of information easily. However, many organizations, large and small, lack both the systems and staff to manage their growing stores of information internally, and turn that well-structured information into powerful advocacy. In an age of rapid and pervasive information flows, human rights organizations are seeking to make their advocacy more resonant both for policymakers and for a broader public audience, and need the tools and skills to do so - but what is the appropriate technology, and how can a human rights organization turn that into a proposal for funding? The Information Program's Civil Society Communications Initiative and the Human Rights and Governance Grants Program (HRGGP) have jointly decided to address this ever-growing need in OSI's grantees and the human rights sector at large. This talk will discuss the new Human Rights Data Initiative at the Open Society Institute, our strategy over the coming years, and how donors can support the targeted, meaningful implementation of technology and data management in human rights organizations.

Elizabeth Eagen is the joint program officer at Open Society Institute in the Information Program and the Human Rights and Governance Grants Program. For HRGGP she covers Russia, Armenia, Georgia, and Kazakhstan, and is the point person for human rights and information. With the Information Program, she works with the Civil Society Communications Initiative on databases and information management for NGOs, with a global remit.

Prior to joining OSI, she completed a Fulbright in the Republic of Georgia, where she researched national identity's role in regulatory decisions for historical and archeological sites. She holds a Masters of Public Policy and a Masters of Eastern European Studies from the University of Michigan. She also holds an undergraduate degree from Macalester College in Russian and International Studies. From 2000-2002, she was an associate at Human Rights Watch's Europe and Central Asia Division.

In the four years since a State Council think tank, the Development Research Center, bluntly declared the failure of three decades of healthcare reform, China has placed a high political priority on designing, building and financing a modern, equitable health delivery system that serves every last one of its 1.3 billion people. As publisher of practice-building trade magazines for medical specialists in China and India, Jeffrey Parker has developed unique and valuable perspectives on what's wrong with China's healthcare system -- and how Indian practitioners are able to deliver results despite a per-capita GDP that is roughly half of China's. Through an unprecedented China-India training exchange, Mr. Parker has begun testing whether Indian models of self-financed grassroots medical startup practices can help doctors shake free of China’s Stalinist paralysis without having to wait for sweeping programmatic reforms that are always on the horizon, but seem never to come. What's more, would such grassroots empowerment models not create unprecedented opportunities for participation by international investors who up to now have been largely marginalized in China's healthcare development?

In this lunchtime colloquium, Mr. Parker reviews his experiences in China and India over the past six years and looks at several exciting recent developments in China. These include:

• An ambitious rural reimbursement scheme that already has begun to complete a nationwide healthcare safety net. The program is creating a vast pool of funds to finance rural medical services, but how will Beijing populate the countryside with sustainable grassroots practices?
• The first domestic healthcare IPO, by which Aier Ophthalmology raised some $50 million as one of 28 debut listings in the Shenzhen's new "ChiNext" Growth Enterprise Market. New wind in the sails of healthcare privatization?
• Licensing reforms that have begun delinking doctors' certification from their "work unit" hospitals under trials in Beijing and Yunnan, removing a vexing obstacle to hands-on surgical training of young practitioners. Will the breaking of senior doctors' "skills monopoly" create opportunities for private-sector training programs that will shake up China's Soviet-style residency programs?

Jeffrey Parker has lived in Greater China since 1990, first as a journalist and since 2003 as a publisher. His transition from chronicler of China's historic rise to active proponent of its economic development gives him a unique perspective on the opportunities still opening up in China -- and the challenges facing anyone keen to participate. With a twin B.A. in Asian Studies and Geography from U.C. Santa Barbara and Masters training in Journalism from Columbia University, Parker trimmed his sails for a China career from an early age. After early editorial jobs in New York and Washington, D.C., he was dispatched to Beijing by United Press International as senior correspondent in 1990. During the next 10 years with UPI and then Reuters, he covered a wide range of political, economic and social stories from postings in Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Peoples Republic. In his final two years at Reuters, Parker got his first taste of media development, launching local-language multimedia news and video feeds in China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia. Since 2003, Parker has built up a family of world-class doctors' magazines serving more than 50,000 specialists in China and India from the Shanghai base of ILX Media Group, where he is editorial director, chief operating officer, a corporate director and investor. Among his objectives is to help foster a badly needed transformation of medical practice across China by inspiring grassroots doctors to deliver high-quality, cost-effective services in rural and less-developed communities left behind by government health care.

Leonid is the Head of Humanitarian Projects at RUSNANO, a $5B Russian State Corporation of Nanotechnologies. Before the RUSNANO, Leonid was a Member of the Executive Board and Authorized Representative for the Government and NGO Relations at the RAO UES (Energy Sector) of Russia, headed, as well as RUSNANO, by Anatoly Chubais. In 1992 Leonid served as an Advisor to Egor Gaidar, then as an advisor to Anatoly Chubais, the Head of  Presidential Administration and later the Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation.

 Leonid was an active participant of the democratic movement in Russia from its emergence. Since 1993  he was the member of the Democratic Choice of Russia political party, then a leading representative of the Union of Right Forces, successor of the Democratic Choice of Russia political party. Since November 2008  Leonid is co-chairman of the Right Cause Party.

In 1993 Leonid worked as a Researcher at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington, D.C. and a Professor of Psychology and Russian Research at the Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Leonid graduated from the Lomonosov Moscow State University with a degree in Psychology and received his Ph.D. in 1983. Upon graduating from the university, he lectured at the Social Psychology Department at the Moscow State University, specializing in interpersonal relations and political psychology. Leonid is currently Professor of the Social Psychology Department, Moscow State University and is the author of eight books.

Co-sponsored by CREEES

Ambassador Kinsman retired from the Canadian Foreign Service in 2006. Over his 40 years of service, he was Chairman of Policy Planning and later Political Director before being named Canada's Ambassador in Moscow in 1992. He was subsequently Ambassador in Rome (1996-2000), High Commissioner in London (2000-2002), and Ambassador to the EU in Brussels (2002-2006). Earlier postings abroad included being Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN in New York and Minister for Political Affairs in Washington. From 1985 to 1989 he was the senior federal official responsible for Cultural Affairs and Broadcasting where he was responsible for preparing the still-current Broadcasting Act, on which he continues to consult.

Today Ambassador Kinsman is a Contributing Writer for Policy Options magazine, a regular commentator for CBC News, and is published widely elsewhere, such as in the International Herald Tribune. He is a frequent speaker and lecturer in Europe and North America, and in 2007-2008 was Diplomat in Residence at the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University, Princeton, N.J. In fall, 2009 he will be a Regents' Lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.

He has been a member of numerous Boards, including the Imperial War Museum, London, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, and the European Policy Centre, and several non-profit Boards, including the Council for a Community of Democracies, and the Victoria Conservatory of Music. His principal business contribution is to the Dundee Group of companies, and he sits as an independent Director on the Board of Dundee Precious Metals, Toronto.

He attended Princeton University and the Institut d'Etudes Politiques, Paris. He lives on Vancouver Island with his wife Hana.

Rajan Menon is the Monroe J. Rathbone Professor of International Relations at Lehigh University. He was an Academic Fellow and Senior Advisor at the Carnegie Corporation of New York for two years, where he played a key role in developing the Corporation's Russia Initiative. Dr. Menon was also a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and as Director for Eurasia Policy Studies at the Seattle-based National Bureau for Asian Research. He is the author of Soviet Power and the Third World (Yale University Press, 1986) and co-editor of Limits to Soviet Power (Lexington Books, 1989). He is a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times and has also written for The Financial Times, The Chicago Tribune, Newsweek, Foreign Affairs, The National Interest, Newsday, and World Policy Journal, among other publications. Dr. Menon received his doctorate in political science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Dr. Menon's latest book, The End of Alliances, was published by Oxford University Press in 2007. He is working on his next book, Hubris: The Anatomy of Military Disasters. Dr. Menon's other areas of research and writing include Russian politics and foreign policy; the international relations of Central Asia, the South Caucasus, South Asia, and the Asia-Pacific; energy development in the Caspian Sea zone; security issues in Asia; globalization, and the comparative study of empires.