Legal

Issues, Human Rights Implications and

Humanitarian Imperatives

Tuesday, December 15, 2015, Fordham Law School

Bateman Room 2-01 B

6:00-6:15

Welcome/Registration

6:15-6:30

Introduction

6:30-6:50

Presentation: Refugee Camps - Assessment Findings

Marciana Popescu, Associate Professor, Fordham
University
Kara Lightburn, Executive Director, Social Tap-The Haiti
Initiative.

6:50-7:50

Panel Discussion
Panelists:
Ms. Beatrice Lindstrom, Human Rights Lawyer, IJDH
Mr. Soufiane Adjali, Head Officer, UNHCR, Haiti
Ms. Amy Bracken, Journalist
Mr. William Haney, Associate Director for External Affairs,
Church World Service
Ms. Nancy Dorsinville, Senior Policy Advisor, UN Special
Envoy for Haiti
Moderator: Ornesha Reagan, International Program
Associate, Social Tap Inc.

7:50-8:20

8:20-8:30

8:30-9:00

Q & A

Closing Remarks

Informal networking


PRESENTERS AND PANELISTS

Beatrice Lindstrom, Esq. is a human rights lawyer at the Institute for Justice &
Democracy in Haiti (IJDH). At IJDH, she is lead counsel in litigation that seeks to hold
the United Nations accountable for introducing a deadly cholera epidemic to Haiti that
has attracted global attention as pioneering new standards for international organization
accountability. Beatrice regularly provides expertise on human rights in Haiti, including
as a former country expert for Freedom House, and as a guest lecturer at law schools
across the country, and in the media, appearing on the BBC, NPR and the New York
Times. In 2010-2011, Beatrice was an Arthur Helton Global Human Rights Fellow at the
Bureau des Avocats Internationaux in Port-au-Prince, where she documented human
rights abuses and worked with communities impacted by the 2010 earthquake to pursue
access to justice. She continues to travel regularly to Haiti, including on a recent factfinding mission to the border with the Dominican Republic. Beatrice is a 2010 graduate
of New York University School of Law, where she was a Root Tilden Kern public
interest scholar, and she holds an undergraduate degree in political science and
economics from Emory University.

Soufiane Adjali, jurist, has been working for the United Nations for over 20 years
and served in different capacities for the United Nations High Commissioner for
Human Rights in Rwanda (1994) as a Human Rights Officer and for the UN
Secretariat as part of the United Nations Peace Keeping Operation in Bosnia and
Herzegovina (1997), as a Civil Affairs Officer. He joined the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees a first time in 1996 and a second time in 1998 as a
Protection Officer and has been serving UNHCR since, in different duty stations;
including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, Cote d'Ivoire, Jordan, Poland ( as the
Senior Liaison Officer to the EU Border Agency : FRONTEX) and Egypt. Before
joining the UNHCR Haiti as the Head of the National Office, Mr. Adjali served in the
UNHCR oversight Division in the Inspector General Office, HQ, as a Senior
Investigation Officer from 2007 until 2013. Mr. S. Adjali is fluent in many languages
including English, French, Arabic, Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian and Farsi.


Amy Bracken is a Boston-based independent reporter and radio producer,
mostly covering migration and other international topics. She lived in Haiti from
2003 to 2005, working as a correspondent for the Haitian Times and Reuters, then
the Associated Press. She still returns to Haiti every few months to report for
various media. Earlier this year, she wrote a series for Al Jazeera America on
working conditions in bateyes in the Dominican Republic, and last month she visited
Anse-a-Pitres, Haiti, to report on the cross-border migration there for PRI's The
World.

William Haney is the Associate Director for External Relations with the Church

World Service Immigration and Refugee Program, where he coordinates

communication policy and works with partners to enhance IRP network resources.
Will began his work with CWS in Nairobi, Kenya at the Resettlement Support Center
Africa where he coordinating outreach to partners and refugees throughout sub-
Saharan Africa. Will has worked for many years in the field of refugee resettlement
and has a thorough knowledge of the US refugee resettlement process both overseas
and in the United States.

Nancy Dorsinville is currently the Senior Policy Advisor for the UN Office of the
Special Envoy to Haiti (OSE), where she focuses on policy issues for vulnerable
populations, namely internally displaced populations (IDPs) and in particular
gender main streaming, orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) and the
handicapped. She is the liaison for the OSE and the government of Haiti (GOH)
ministries responsible for these transversal issues. Originally from Haiti, she is an
Anthropologist and prior to joining the OSE was a Research Associate at the Harvard
School of Public Health, where her research areas included HIV stigma, health
disparities and gender-based violence (GBV). She served as director of HIV
prevention education for the city of NY and has a long standing affiliation with the
Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), under whose umbrella she conducted a
country-wide diagnostic of the health care system in Haiti in conjunction with the
Haitian Ministry of Health (MSPP) and Partners in Health. She has done extensive
field work with Dr Paul Farmer and continues to be part of his Global Health
teaching team at Harvard University.

Kara Lightburn began her non-profit career after leaving a corporate role at
BlackRock Financial to work at Bridge Over Troubled Waters, Inc. (Bridge). At
Bridge she became a part of a senior team which managed a multi-faceted
organization that provided comprehensive social services to over 4,000 homeless
and at-risk youth. In her tenure at Bridge Kara gained extensive experience and
learned important non-profit best practices and strategic administrative skills. She
then served as a Non-Profit consultant, doing consulting work for Barry University
and the Dominican American National Foundation along with other philanthropic
organizations in South Florida. While in Miami she was recruited by the Obama
campaign to work as a Field Organizer were she showed proven leadership in
community development and organizing; responsible for organizing a diverse
community for 900,000. During her work with the Obama campaign Kara saw
firsthand what community organizing from an asset-based community development
approach could do to bring about change and she was inspired to start Social Tap
Inc-The Haiti Initiative. Kara is the Executive Director of Social Tap-The Haiti
Initiative leading the organization forward with a mission to provide programs and
services through grassroots partnerships to address the identified and emerging
needs of at-risk, vulnerable, and exploited populations, including those displaced
either by natural and/or man-made disasters internationally in developing
countries.

Marciana Popescu has been working in the field of international social work

and international social development for over 20 years, with international

organizations and educational institutions in multiple countries. Dr. Popescu has
started her career in Romania, at the University of Buchares. She also worked as a
UNICEF consultant (1998-2000), and was part of an evaluation team conducting a
comprehensive external evaluation of the UNICEF Family Education Program in
Romania (2000). During 2001-2006, Dr. Popescu was the Director of a Masters
program in Community and International Development at Andrews University (AU).
During her tenure at Andrews University she worked with multiple international
sites, and taught intensive courses in International Development, in Ukraine, Italy,
Japan, Kenya and South Africa. She started teaching at Fordham University in 2006.
In 2007 she designed a course in International Social Development and Capacity
Building, which she initially linked to study-abroad educational trips into the
Dominican Republic, focusing on statelessness and birth rights for children born to
Haitian residents in the DR. Immediately following the 2010 earthquake, she shifted
the focus of her work to Haiti and organized yearly study tours in collaboration with
KONPAY (a local NGO working on environmental issues and youth leadership
development) and Social Tap, focusing on post disaster relief and reconstruction in
Haiti. In 2013, she worked with Kara Lightburn and Serge Turin on a 1-year follow-
up study of the effectiveness of relocation strategies for people in the Pinchinat
camp, Jacmel, Haiti. Following that study, she organized, in collaboration with Social
Tap, the Institute for Humanitarian Affairs at Fordham University, the Gannon
Scholars Program and the United Nations Development Program, a two-day
conference focusing on sustainable relief and reconstruction in Haiti. Over the past 5
years she developed a collaboration with the Institute of International Humanitarian
Affairs, designed and taught a Community Participation in Emergency Response
course to humanitarian aid workers around the world, and increased her focus on
forced migration, legal and humanitarian implications, as well as migration policies
and best practices.

Ornesha Reagan serves as Associate Communications Officer for the United
Nations Executive Office of the Secretary-General, Sustainable Energy for All
initiative. Her academic background includes a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political
Science and Art from the City University of New York, Brooklyn College, and a
Masters degree from New York Universitys Center for Global Affairs. While at NYU
her academic area of expertise was international relations with a strong focus on
development. Ornesha continues to be actively engaged in the field of international
relations and international development though her involvement in the NGO, Social
Tap-The Haiti Initiative where she serves as the International Program Associate.