Category: News

“There is a growing recognition that children are not just adults in the making or mini-adults, but are themselves rights-holders.” This year Professor Cécile Aptel, a visiting professor at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and a fellow at Harvard FXB Center, will teach International Perspectives on Justice for Children as part of Harvard FXB Center’s Child Protection Certificate Program, which is undertaken in partnership with UNICEF. Professor…

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Center director Jennifer Leaning, with Michael Van Rooyen, director of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, are co-instructors in a new EdX course focused on the principles guiding humanitarian response to modern emergencies and the challenges faced in the current global climate. As of August 30, 2016, enrollment in this tremendously popular offering numbered almost 16,000, with students representing 188 countries. As of today, September 7, enrollment is still open for the…

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This Special Section of the Health and Human Rights Journal will examine the implementation of the right to health in the case of Romani populations across the globe. It will draw attention to ongoing discrimination against the Roma and Roma-related groups in relation to realization of the right to health.  Articles will consider access to health among Romani communities in Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, and elsewhere. Guest editors are Jacqueline…

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Over the next two semesters Harvard FXB Center, in partnership with Harvard’s Middle East Initiative, will present a seminar series, Building Bridges: Responding to the Syrian Refugee Crisis. Scholars, practitioners, and thought leaders from across the Harvard and Boston communities engaged in research on Syrian refugees will discuss challenges and innovative solutions to promote refugee wellbeing. The series will be led by Harvard FXB fellow Lara Jirmanus, whose research focuses…

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By Elizabeth Donger The number of people trafficked in India for forced labor has been estimated at anything between 20 and 65 million. In June 2016 the Indian government published a new draft anti-trafficking bill that has been hailed by some as the country’s first-ever comprehensive anti-trafficking law and applauded for strengthening criminal investigation and prosecution processes. Yet due to several glaring issues this bill constitutes another missed opportunity to…

Continue reading “India Anti-Trafficking Bill Changes Little for Child Laborers, but Activists Continue Fight from the Bottom Up”

On July 28, 2016, the International Crisis Group released a detailed report on contemporary refugee flight from Central America. Easy Prey: Criminal Violence and Central American Migration, presents a stark picture of the tragedy unfolding to the immediate South of the US and is a troubling account of the US’s complicity in serious human rights violations. The latest in a long series of studies of the mass, northbound distress migration…

Continue reading “Fortress America: The US’s Willful Exclusion of Children Seeking Refuge from the Child Murder Capitals of the World”

“This measure is diametrically opposed to what India’s poorest children need.” by Jacqueline Bhabha On Tuesday July 26, 2016, the Lok Sabha, India’s lower house of Parliament, approved a Child Labour Amendment Bill that could increase legal child labor in India, despite the government’s claims to the contrary. This measure is diametrically opposed to what India’s poorest children need.  As our recent report on child trafficking in India recently demonstrates,…

Continue reading “India Moves Back to 19th Century for Most Vulnerable Children”

Empowering People with Intellectual Disabilities looks at good practice examples of building communities for adults with intellectual disabilities, including autism.  Good practice means humane and dignified provision of services and housing that meet the needs of this population age 22 and over. The discussion is based on the author’s great experience and knowledge of the rights of people with disabilities.  She concludes that the good models must be scaled up,…

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“We cannot separate protection from prevention. This represents a false dichotomy” Every year in India, thousands of children are trafficked across the country to work long hours in highly exploitative conditions. Thanks to the efforts of official agencies, a small proportion of these children are rescued and returned to their home states. However, a recently released report by the Harvard FXB Center for Health and Human Rights reveals that despite…

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by Jacqueline Bhabha In a recent paper, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Migrants noted: “Given the EU’s share of global resources and wealth of substantive normative standards, recent deaths at sea, the suffering seen at all stages of migration and other human rights issues have to be understood not as the result of some kind of powerlessness, but of political will and policy choices.” This observation applies…

Continue reading “Seeking Safety Alone”

Center director Jennifer Leaning was interviewed by CBC Radio’s “The Current,” the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s flagship national current affairs program, as part of a panel conversation on the subject of medical neutrality. “There’s definitely no safe place for medical assets, medical hospitals, medical personnel. What we’re facing with a complete, I would say, a complete collapse of the very fundamental norm of medical neutrality,” Leaning said. See the full CBC…

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By John Anusavice On April 8, 2016, Harvard University held its fourth annual Roma conference on the 26 anniversary of International Roma Day. The conference was a pioneering effort to address the wide-ranging question of reparations and to advocate for joint action across historical and geographical spheres. In particular, the event marked a starting point for moving the topic of Romani reparations from the margins of academic and institutional interest…

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by Krista Oehlke On Wednesday, April 13, as part of Harvard FXB Center’s Works-in-Progress series, , G. Barrie Landry Fellow Maneli Aghakan delivered a presentation on the current state of child protection in Iran. Aghakhan comes to Harvard from the UNICEF Iran office, where she heads the child protection unit. Aghakhan, along with Landry Fellow Ketevan Melikadze, of Georgia, will finish her MPH at the Harvard Chan School with a…

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“Politicians and the public should be wary of the false reassurance afforded by the decrease in migration rates as a result of the Europe-Turkey agreement.” by Jonathan M. Clarke Recent news reports have described a dramatic reduction in the number of migrants arriving on the shores of Greek islands. On March 26, 2016, the Guardian newspaper reported that the number of migrants arriving on Greek shores had “slowed to a…

Continue reading “EU Approach to the Syrian Migrant Crisis Ignores the Welfare of Those Already Settled in Europe”

The agreement will “create a precedent for globalized indifference to suffering, even when that suffering is on one’s own doorstep…” On March 18 EU leaders and Turkey finally struck their long discussed Grand Bargain. In return for becoming Europe’s buffer against distress migrants fleeing devastating conflict and hardship, President Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian government extracted valuable political and economic booty – the prospect of visa-free travel to the EU for Turkish…

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For immediate release: Thursday, March 31, 2016 Boston, MA – Neither legal nor socio-economic interventions have eradicated widespread forced and bonded labor in India. But a new report published today by Harvard University’s FXB Center for Health and Human Rights provides some hope for progress. With detailed evidence and meticulous analysis, the report documents the very positive impact of a community organization’s work on entrenched labor exploitation in Uttar Pradesh, India’s…

Continue reading “Ending Forced Labor in India: What Does It Take?”