The Universal Declaration at 75 – Looking Back and Forward

Jacqueline Bhabha

On December 10th, 2023, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the seminal and aspirational foundation for post World War II human rights principles, will turn 75. At the time of its signing, the Declaration encapsulated the contradictions of a world order in which the signatory states proclaimed “the inherent dignity and…the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family” while many still maintained colonies whose peoples were…

New Study on Romani American Experience Shines Light on Persistent Inequities and Discrimination

Report infographic

The François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University today released a new study that draws attention to the inequities the Roma diaspora faces in the United States. Published in collaboration with the advocacy nonprofit Voice of Roma, the study, titled Romani Realities in the United States: Breaking the Silence, Challenging the Stereotypes, includes insight from 363 questionnaires with Romani Americans, touching on socioeconomic conditions, stigma, discrimination,…

Harvard University Centers Condemn Recent Police Violence in the United States

The following is a joint statement from the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University,  Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School, the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice at Harvard Law School, and the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. Note: please see below for a list of additional co-signers. “We…

International Roma Day Watch Party on Facebook

Responses to State Sponsored Collective Injustice (past event poster with a photo of the memorial for the Roma holocaust

  Because of the coronavirus, we had to reschedule our planned event for International Roma Day, Intersectional Discrimination: the Roma Case. It would have been the eighth annual International Roma Day event at Harvard. But we cannot let the day pass without marking it.   To honor the day the Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University will host a Facebook “Watch Party” at 10 AM…

New Study Highlights Critical Gaps in the United States’ Special Education System

A new Harvard Educational Review article, “Racial Differences in Special Education Identification and Placement,” examines how the United States’ special education system is failing to serve communities of color equitably from start to finish, from identification to classroom placement. The article, authored by Todd Grindal, Laura Schifter, Gabriel Schwartz, and Thomas Hehir, analyzes the anonymous data of approximately 4.5 million public school students living in three states around the country.…

Trauma as a Border Control Strategy

By Jacqueline Bhabha and Mary T. Bassett The United States continues to pull ahead in a xenophobic race to the bottom, making fear and trauma central to its border control toolkit. The list is long: Executive orders purporting to ban Muslims, slashing refugee admission quotas, reversing well-established legal precedent protecting the right to asylum of rape and domestic violence survivors, the willful fueling of deportation fear among law-abiding residents, and…

Professor Bhabha: States Have an Obligation to Protect Migrant Children

Jacqueline Bhabha

A new International Organization for Migration (IOM) report released today takes a closer look at the deaths and disappearances of migrants around the world. “Fatal Journeys: Volume 4” focuses on missing migrant children. According to IOM data, nearly 1,600 children have been reported dead or missing since 2014 – a likely undercount. Although it is well known that children are one of the most vulnerable groups of migrants, data on…

Invisible Hands Film Screening

Award-winning documentary and New York Times Critic’s Pick INVISIBLE HANDS exposes child labor and trafficking within the supply chains of the world’s biggest corporations, which produce some of our most loved items. Join us for a film screening of INVISIBLE HANDS followed by a PANEL DISCUSSION. Film Screening: 5:30PM EST (2:30PM PST) Panel Discussion: 7:00PM EST (4:00PM PST) PANEL DETAILS MODERATOR:  Mary Bassett, Director, Harvard FXB Center PANELISTS: Shraysi Tandon,…

One in One Hundred: Roma Value Education But Face Racism in Access

One in One Hundred: Drivers of Success and Resilience among College-Educated Romani Adolescents in Serbia New report on factors for success among Romani college students challenges the narrative of Roma indifference to education For immediate release: December 20, 2018 One of the major factors in whether Roma adolescents continue on to university is if they have significant support from a non-Roma teacher or peer in combatting everyday racism in school,…

Human Rights and Turkish Healthcare

Dr. Yüksel is Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and former Director of the Psychosocial Trauma Program at the School of Medicine, University of Istanbul. She is also a founding member of the European Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. Her clinical work and research have spanned the treatment of sexual and physical violence survivors, torture survivors, mass violence survivors and transgender persons and their families. In this presentation, Dr. Yüksel will discuss…

“On Her Shoulders” Film Screening

In honor of 70 years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Harvard FXB Center for Health and Human Rights and the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) invite you to a film screening of “On Her Shoulders” which explores the activism of 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winner Nadia Murad. The film follows the life and activism of Nadia Murad who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize this year, just after…

GHP Brown Bag – Healthcare (Data) for All: A Roadmap for India

This event in the Brown Bag Seminar Series, sponsored by the Harvard Chan Department of Global Health and Population, features Dr. Satchit Balsari, assistant professor in emergency medicine at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Harvard FXB Fellow. In India, as around the world, there is vast excitement about the power of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence in advancing healthcare delivery. And yet, the vast majority…

Northeastern Law Event – Rethinking Borders

Jacqueline Bhabha

Northeastern University School of Law Event – Rethinking Borders: Climate Change, Migration, and Human Rights Professor Jacqueline Bhabha, FXB Director of Research and Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health, will be the keynote speaker (11:45am – 1:15pm) at this all-day event,”Rethinking Borders: Climate Change, Migration and Human Rights.” Sponsored by the Northeastern University Law Review in this year’s symposium, the  participants…

Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Nigeria: A Personal Perspective

men's clothes on pavement

Photo: Cover, Romeo Oriogun’s book, Burnt Men; photo by Chibuihe-Light Obi Oluwasegun Romeo Oriogun, Nigerian poet, Artist Protection Fund & SAR Fellow In Nigeria to be Queer and vocal means to live in danger, as society forces to conform to what it knows as normalcy which in reality is a remnant of colonization. There is no safe space and Queer people are arrested, lynched and in some cases burnt to…

Rapid Needs Assessment of the Rohingya in Cox’s Bazar

In March 2018, researchers from Harvard FXB and BRAC (the Bangladeshi-based international nongovernmental organization) conducted a rapid assessment household survey among 800 Rohingya and host families in Ukhia and Teknaf in the District of Cox’s Bazar in southern Bangladesh, on the border of Myanmar. Preliminary results are available here. The study underscored the alarmingly low levels of vaccination among the Rohingya in Myanmar, the high mortality rate among young men…

Improving Services for Survivors of Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation: Findings and Recommendations from a 10-year Longitudinal Study in Cambodia

Dr. Laura Cordisco Tsai, PhD, MSSW Carr Center Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School WIPs are an opportunity for researchers to share their work while it is still in formulation. A WIP generally starts with a formal presentation, followed by a lively question-and-answer period. The series is open to all Harvard affiliates. If you are a member of the general public, please email Lena Ransohoff a few days in advance.

Harvard Bookstore Event: Can We Solve the Migration Crisis?

Harvard Book Store welcomes renowned human rights lawyer and Harvard scholar and professor JACQUELINE BHABHA (and FXB research director) for a discussion of her latest book, Can We Solve the Migration Crisis?. About Can We Solve the Migration Crisis? Every minute 24 people are forced to leave their homes and over 65 million are currently displaced worldwide. Small wonder that tackling the refugee and migration crisis has become a global…

Professor Jacqueline Bhabha on Family Separation and Migration

Separation at the border On June 27, our colleague Chris Sweeney in the Harvard Chan Office of Communications interviewed Harvard FXB’s director of research, Professor Jacqueline Bhabha, on family separation for their feature Three Questions.  Below is an excerpt from the piece, with one question and answer: In all of your years working on migrant issues around the world, have you ever seen a similar policy enacted? I can’t think…

June 22, 2018 Harvard FXB Statement on US Zero Tolerance Policy

Statement Banner

President Trump introduced a “zero tolerance” immigration policy on April 6, 2018, as a seemingly fail-safe measure to prevent what he calls undesirables from seeking to enter the US across the border with Mexico. He launched the policy to elevate his stature as the defender of an American populace under threat. His account is eerily reminiscent of pronouncements by genocidal regimes dehumanizing targeted groups. Rwandan Hutus described their Tutsi targets…

Roma Rights and the Next Generation: Alone and Together

By Susan Lloyd McGarry This spring semester Harvard FXB has sponsored or convened three events that brought students and Roma scholars together and suggested some possible future directions in the struggle for Roma rights and in Harvard FXB’s Roma research.. Alone Together: Strength and Solidarity Between the Roma and African American Communities—Harvard FXB’s Sixth Annual International Roma Day Event On April 4, a few days before International Roma Day on…

International Moves Can Provide Pathway to Rational, Just and Inclusive Migration Policy, Says Bhabha

picture of Jackie Bhabha talking

Harvard FXB research director Jacqueline Bhabha recently gave the Rethinking Open Society lecture at the Central European University in Budapest earlier this spring. Below is the first paragraph from CEU’s coverage of her talk: “It is hard to think of a time when public engagement with migration policy globally has been as evident or as polarized as it is now,” said Harvard Professor Jaqueline Bhabha, as she opened her Rethinking…

the migrant diaries: Mexico 2017-1

Refugees at the beginning of the Via Crucis

‘Don’t Hate Migrants’ by Lynne Jones Chiapas, Mexico: Ciudad Hidalgo on the border of Guatemala and Mexico* Sunday April 9, 2017 When I asked the tall woman with the tiny baby why she left El Salvador, she answered in five words: Because they killed my husband. The tiny baby is 27 days old. She holds him close against her chest with a cloth pulled over to protect him from the…

Does Power Listen to Truth in the Case of the Romani People?

By Margareta Matache, Jacqueline Bhabha, and Andrzej Mirga On March 14, in Fogarasi and Others v. Romania, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) condemned Romanian police officers for their inhuman treatment of a Romani family. According to this highly respected international human rights court, the EU member state’s conduct, as enacted by its law enforcement agents, constituted a breach of Article 3 of the European Convention, which provides that…

Who Will Act on Behalf of the Rohingya People of Myanmar?

By Arlan Fuller Over the past three months, the Myanmar military has led a violent campaign targeting the Rohingya people in Rakhine State and currently shows no signs of relenting. In early October, the government cited an attack on border police as justification for a wide-sweeping offensive targeting men, women and children, with beatings, incinerated homes, systematic rape, and extrajudicial killings. In Myanmar (once known as Burma) on January 20,…

Report Urges Justice and Reparations for Mexican Victims of Drug-Trade Mass Killings

By Krista Oehlke Violence stemming from the drug trade has been surmounting in Mexico for decades, taking an increased toll on civilian communities. In October 2016, Sergio Aguayo, FXB fellow and research professor at the Centro de Estudios Internacionale of the El Colegio de México,  released a new report investigating two mass killings in Mexico by the criminal organization known as Los Zetas. In 2010, the drug gang allegedly massacred…

India’s Approach to the Rescue and Reintegration of Trafficked Children Marred by Poor Coordination, Lack of Accountability

For immediate release: Monday, March 21, 2016 Boston, MA – Labor trafficking is a gross violation that affects hundreds of thousands of Indian children each year. Despite the Indian government’s considerable attention to the problem, the rescue and reintegration apparatus is beset by a range of problems that can leave children at risk of further harm, according to a new report published today by Harvard University’s FXB Center for Health…

Health, Human Rights and the Zika Virus

To fight Zika we must fight poverty and powerlessness and ensure that women enjoy their rights. by Alicia Ely Yamin Health ministers throughout Latin America have announced they will unite to stop the alarming spread of the Zika virus. Similarly, the World Health Organization has acted with uncharacteristic haste to curb this virus, of which the world presently knows very little. But there is much we do know about containing…

Tracking Disease at World’s Largest Religious Festival

by Karen Feldscher September, 24, 2015 — From July through September this year, up to 30 million people are traveling to the cities of Nashik and Trimbakeshwar in India to bathe in the holy waters of the Godavari River, as part of the Kumbh Mela Hindu religious festival. Amidst this mass gathering—supported by acres and acres of temporary parking lots, police stations, fire stations, health clinics, streetlights and toilets—a small…

New UNHCHR Guide for Health Policy Makers

July 23, 2015. Harvard FXB, working in partnership with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the World Health Organization, among other key partners, has produced a guide to help health policy makers “effectively and meaningfully implement a human rights-based approach to sexual and reproductive health, maternal health and under-5 child health. From the introduction: Health policy makers have an important role to play in contributing to both the…

Social Protection and Human Rights

July 7, 2015. The Social Protection and Human Rights platform promotes awareness of human rights based approaches to social protection. Its aim is to encourage critical thinking about current systems of social protection and to help bridge gaps between policy and practice. Established in 2013, the platform is an initiative of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC),…

Free Human Rights Course, July 2015

A free nanocourse* on health and human rights will be held at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in July 2015. The short course will focus on the region sometimes referred to as the “Global South”: Latin and South America, Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Most states in the Global South have ratified international human rights treaties that recognize the right to health. However, in practice…

Resource Guide

Harvard FXB, by invitation from Open Society Foundations (OSF), has developed the 5th edition of the Health and Human Rights Resource Guide. The Resource Guide has been designed to be a user-friendly, multi-purpose tool in advocating for health and human rights with a wide array of users, including health workers, trainers, program designers, litigators, and policymakers. The Resource Guide covers basic concepts in health and human rights. The introduction provides…