Symposium provides human rights insight
Whether it was the use of child soldiers in Uganda, the rights of prisoners, or the use of questionable interrogation methods by the military, students heard from a wide variety of speakers on various human rights issues at the third annual Georgia College Global Citizenship Symposium held Feb. 8-10. The symposium featured several different programs from the various academic departments on campus to learn about human rights issues all over the world.
“We planned this symposium with our students in mind,” said Dr. Gregg Kaufman, coordinator of Civic Engagement Projects and the American Democracy Project on campus.
The first day of the symposium focused on the historical and philosophical contexts surrounding human rights. After the introduction and welcome, and a quick series of lectures, the play, “Dr. Korczak and the Children” was performed by members of the GCSU Theatre Department. The play is based on the final hours of Dr. Janusz Korczak and the orphanage he ran in the Warsaw, Poland, ghetto in 1942. Korczak and his orphans were taken and executed. The keynote address for the first evening was delivered by Bertram Ramcharan, the former United Nations Acting High Commissioner for Human Rights.
The second day focused on specific human rights issues. Some of those issues included rights of prisoners, the death penalty, child soldiers in East Africa, the relationship between China and Tibet, and interrogation methods used in the Iraq War and the War on Terror.
Talitha Baker, a member of the national staff for the Invisible Children Project, delivered a presentation and a documentary about the origins of the project. The short documentary followed two university filmmakers and their friends on their journey to Uganda, in Africa, and their attempts to aid child soldiers there
Posted by Scotty Thompson
on Feb 12 2010. Filed under News.
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