Premiere of Sand and Sorrow, a documentary on Darfur featuring Professor Samantha Power
8:00 PM ET/PT, Thursday, December 6:

HBO
http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/sandandsorrow/

SAND AND SORROW details the historically tragic events in Darfur that have given rise to an Arab-dominated government's willingness to kill and displace its own indigenous African people, and examines the international community's "legacy of failure" to respond to such profound crimes against humanity in the past. To date, as many as 400,000 civilians in Darfur have perished from violence, starvation and disease.

The documentary offers an exclusive look at the situation on the ground inside Darfur, drawing on unprecedented access to a contingent of African Union peacekeeping forces. SAND AND SORROW follows human rights activist John Prendergast, Harvard University professor Samantha Power and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof as they journey through burgeoning refugee camps along the Chad-Sudan border, past mass graves inside Darfur itself, and into offices of the United States Senate to plead on behalf of the innocents of Darfur. They have helped fuel a growing and vocal international advocacy movement that is determined to make the phrase "never again" mean something.

From Khartoum to New York to London, experts interviewed in the film include such varied individuals as Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, U.S. Senators Barak Obama and Sam Brownback, Sudan scholars Alex de Waal and Gerard Prunier, and rebel leader Minni Minawi, each of whom provides a powerful argument for ending this conflict now, and finally learning the lessons of recent history. The behind-the-scenes coverage of the historic but failed Darfur peace signing in Abuja, Nigeria, and the inspiring rally on the Washington Mall confront the viewer with the power of hope and the face of evil.

In the U.S., efforts extend from rural high schools and big college campuses all the way to the halls of power. SAND AND SORROW follows a group of concerned Illinois students who organized a grass-roots campaign to draw attention to the tragedy. Such regional activities are echoed in larger demonstrations in places like Washington, D.C., where a huge crowd gathered in 2006 to demand action and raise awareness.

SAND AND SORROW exposes conditions in the vast, violence-ridden Internally Displaced Persons camps of Darfur, bringing viewers face-to-face with the collective sorrow of a people devastated by the indifference of others. These people have joined the growing spectral chorus of those who waited for help in genocides past - help that once again may never come.

Director Paul Freedman observes, "The tragic events taking place in Darfur unfortunately are a continuation of the lack of response from the international community in protecting millions of innocent lives from their own government. Without humanitarian aid and political resolve from the U.S. and other countries, these displaced people from Darfur could suffer the same fate as those innocents from Eastern Europe, Cambodia and Rwanda."

SAND AND SORROW will be streamed in its entirety on hbo.com from Dec. 7 through Dec. 9; the documentary will be also available on HBO On Demand from Dec. 7 through Jan. 7. HBO is working with Campus Progress and the ENOUGH organization on an extensive outreach campaign, which includes organized house screening parties on the night of the documentary's debut (Dec. 6) and a live hbo.com online chat and podcast with John Prendergast, Samantha Power and Nicholas Kristof immediately following the network premiere.

SAND AND SORROW was the closing night film of the 2007 International Emerging Talent Film Festival in Monte Carlo.

SAND AND SORROW was directed, produced, written and edited by Paul Freedman; producer, Bradley J. Kaplan; co-producer, Aarti Sequeira; composer, Jamie Dunlap; executive producers, George Clooney, Natalie Lum Freedman, Michael Mendelsohn.

Calendar link with details

Film's Website

The Struggle for Political Rights in China

6:00 PM, Wednesday, December 5
JFK Forum, Harvard Kennedy School of Government
79 John F. Kennedy Street
Cambridge, MA

Yang Jianli, KSG ’91, President, Foundation for China in the 21st century, advocate for democracy in China, recently freed from Chinese prison
Prof. Merle Goldman , Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and author of From Comrade To Citizen: The Struggle For Political Rights In China
Prof. Thomas Kellogg, Senior Research Scholar in Law and Lecturer in Law, Yale Law School
Prof. Jacqueline Bhabha, Harvard University Committee on Human Rights Studies (moderator)
With introductory remarks by Mr. Joshua Rubenstein, Northeast Regional Director, Amnesty International USA

Co-sponsored by Amnesty International USA and the University Committee on Human Rights Studies.

in conjunction with:
Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Kennedy School of Government
East Asian Legal Studies, Harvard Law School
Facing History and Ourselves
John King Fairbank Center for East Asian Research
Harvard College Advocates for Human Rights
Harvard Humanitarian Initiative
Harvard University Asia Center
Human Rights Program, Harvard Law School
Institute of Politics, Kennedy School of Government
Program on Intrastate Conflict and Conflict Resolution.
Edmund J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics

Thursday, November 28, 2007
3:30 - 5:00 PM
Fainsod Room, Littauer

Bonnie Docherty will discuss how the U.S. military can better train its troops to reduce civilian casualties. Using the U.S. Army’s National Training Center (NTC) as a case study, she will argue that the military needs to increase its emphasis on rules of engagement, improve the realism of its facilities, and incorporate humanitarian analysis into training reviews. This talk is based on three investigative missions to NTC and is the subject of Docherty’s new paper “‘More Sweat . . . Less Blood’: U.S. Military Training and Minimizing Civilian Casualties,” which will be published by the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.

Bonnie Docherty is a researcher in the Arms Division at Human Rights Watch and a clinical instructor and lecturer at Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Program. She has recently analyzed how the U.S. military should improve its training to reduce harm to civilians; Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy will publish her paper on this topic as “‘More Sweat…Less Blood’: U.S. Military Training and Minimizing Civilian Casualties.” She has also done extensive research and advocacy on civilian casualties in combat and particularly on cluster munitions. She has conducted field missions to research the conduct of war in Lebanon (2006), Israel (2006), Gaza (2005), Iraq (2003), and Afghanistan (2002). From the findings of each mission, she has authored or co-authored a full-length Human Rights Watch report. At Harvard, she focuses her clinical projects on international humanitarian law, freedom of expression, and human rights and the environment. She has also published in the Harvard Human Rights Journal, the NYU Environmental Law Journal, and the Harvard Environmental Law Review. She received her J.D. from Harvard Law School and her A.B. from Harvard University.

Refreshments will be served.

A Seminar with Kevin Bales, "Ending Slavery":

“I was enslaved at age 11 as part of a human trafficking plot. I know modern slavery from the inside, and since coming to freedom I am committed to end it forever. Every human life has value. People have been sold for far too long and it's time to stop it. This book shows us how to make a world where no more childhoods will be stolen and sold as mine was.”
– Former child slave in the U.S.

A Seminar with Kevin Bales
Director, Free The Slaves

moderated by

Professor Jacqueline Bhabha
Executive Director of the University Committee on Human Rights Studies at Harvard University

Come listen to the world’s expert on modern slavery and Pulitzer Prize-winning author discuss his new book. Drawing on the real lives and stories of today’s slaves, Ending Slavery gives practical steps we can all take as citizens and consumers to build a world without slavery.

Thursday, Nov. 15th, 12-2pm
Allison Dining Room
Taubman Building, fifth floor

Lunch will be served at 11:45 AM, No RSVPs taken
Co-sponsored with the Women and Public Policy Program

Film:"The Price of Sugar"

6 pm, Wiener Auditorium, Taubman Building, Ground Floor

Followed by Q and A with producers Eric Grunebaum and Bill Haney

"The Price of Sugar" follows a charismatic Spanish priest, Father Christopher Hartley, as he organizes some of this hemisphere's poorest people, challenging powerful interests profiting from their work. When he arrives in the Dominican Republic, he's warned against entering the sugar plantations where most of his parishioners live. Breaking a centuries old taboo, he discovers shocking examples of modern-day slavery intrinsic to the global sugar trade.

On an island known for tropical beauty, tourists flock to escape winter and relax with little knowledge that just a few miles away thousands of dispossessed Haitians are toiling away in unseen plantations harvesting sugarcane most of which ends up in the United States. Cutting cane by machete, they work 12 hour days, 7 days a week frequently without access to decent housing, electricity, clean water, education, healthcare and adequate nutrition. Often they are stateless, with neither Dominican nor Haitian identity and virtually invisible in the eyes of the law.

“The Price of Sugar” raises key questions about where the products we consume originate, at what cost they are produced and ultimately, where our responsibility lies.

Pizza will be served!
Seating is on a first come basis

Film: "Total Denial"

We will be continuing the Group 133 human rights film festival on Tuesday night at 7 p.m. at Harvard with a screening of Total Denial. Please join us for this powerful documentary about the Doe v. Unocal case. The case, brought by a group of Burmese villagers and EarthRights International against the Unocal oil company, used the Alien Tort Claims Act to challenge the severe human rights abuses committed during Unocal's collaboration with the Burmese government while building a new oil pipeline.

We are very fortunate to have an amazing panel scheduled to speak after the screening:

Aye Aye San, Human Rights Activist/Former Political Prisoner from Burma
Mark McDowell, Canadian Diplomat to Burma, Thailand, and Laos, 2003–2007
Shanti Maung, Student Activist, Harvard Burma Action Group
Tyler Giannini, Co-founder, EarthRights International/ Clinical Director, Harvard Law School Human Rights Program

Student Internship Presentations

Kennedy School students who received funding from the Carr Center to complete human rights-related internships this past summer will speak about their experiences. Topics TBA.

12-1pm, Carr Center Conference Room, Rubenstein 219

"The Most Noble Adventure: The Marshall Plan and the Time When America Helped Save Europe," Seminar with Greg Behrman, Carr Center Fellow