PUBLIC LECTURE: The Inaugural Karrakatta Club Lecture

You are invited to the Inaugural Karrakatta Club Lecture

Presented by

Dr Annie Sparrow

Millennium Fellow in Human Rights, Harvard University, Human Rights Watch, New York

"Right Side up: the interface between health and human rights, and the consequences of violations of rights as experienced in Sudan, Afghanistan and Haiti"

Abstract: The human rights movement has come a long way since the establishment of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at the end of WWII. In almost every corner of the globe, people of all kinds and professions have raised the banner of human rights to support their demands for respect, dignity, education, marriage - whether students, gay activists, African women’s groups, Tibetan monks or asylum seekers on our own shores. Thanks to this movement, by the end of the last century human rights had become one of the world’s dominant ideologies, tirelessly proclaimed by governments. Yet this movement has been slow to recognize the integral relationship between health and human rights, particularly in the health of children of developing countries. As Australians it may be difficult to perceive how violations of human rights are played out on the ground, and affect ordinary lives, as our own human rights are enshrined in domestic law and we have the economic capacity and political will to implement them. Rights that we might take for granted, such as the right to education, may exist on paper alone in other continents.

Conflict and its aftermath dramatically illustrate the relationship between health and rights. Many of us will remember the horror of Rwanda, and its commemoration last year with the echoing “Never again”. Yet in Sudan today, the conflict in Darfur is now in its third year, with at least 180,000 civilians dead and 2.4 million displaced as a result of crimes against humanity. Government forces and militias have systematically targeted African civilian communities: bombarding, killing, raping, forcibly displacing and destroying hundreds of villages. Through her own experiences in Darfur this year, and in Afghanistan and Haiti, Dr Sparrow will illustrate how infringement of rights, whether the right to education or violation of the rules of engagement play out in the lives of ordinary civilians, both through her own experience and through the eyes of the smallest witnesses of violations of rights, the children.



Biographical Note: Annie Sparrow is a Millennium Fellow in Human Rights from Harvard University, currently seconded to Human Rights Watch, New York. In February 2005 she traveled to the border of Darfur and Chad to document the violations of human rights, deliberate killings of civilians, rape and other war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Government of Sudan.

She is also a paediatrician with expertise in critical care, indigenous and refugee health. Her proficiency in refugee health followed several stints in detention camps in central Australia for asylum seekers from Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. She has worked in Afghanistan both during and after the Taliban regime. Additionally she has worked in Haiti during the civil upheaval and conflict of 2004. In 2004 she completed a Masters in Public Health at the Harvard School of Public Health, in addition to the Harvard-Tufts-MIT Humanitarian Studies Initiative. She was awarded a Third Millennium Fellowship in Human Rights from Harvard University, in addition to the Albert Schweitzer Prize and the Fang Ching Sun Award in Indigenous Health. She is currently engaged as a medical consultant and researcher at Human Rights Watch.

ALL WELCOME. NO RESERVATION IS REQUIRED