Raquel's Letter

This is my response to Raquel's letter.  What does anybody think?

Dear Mr. Márcio Lacerda

      The UNESCO Student Ambassadors for Human Rights (SAHR) are dismayed at the current state of housing in Vila Acaba Mundo in your beautiful city of Belo Horizonte.  It is unfair that families who have lived in Vila Acaba Mundo for over 60 years be evicted.  This is a direct violation of their housing rights.  It is urgent for you to declare the expropriation of the area where the people of Vila Acaba Mundo are threatened with eviction.  Moreover, a reversal of your veto on the bill that would have given Vila Acaba Mundo status as an area of special interest would greatly ameliorate the current situation.

Regards,

     Rafael Péres-Segura on behalf of UNESCO SAHR
     University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut USA   

Minutes Feb 19 2009

Present: Kara, Stephanie, Simon, Alana, Aaron, Dan, Sharielle, Hannah, Jenn, Jason, Rafa, Allison, Amanda, Dr. O, Pronoma, Romana, Adana, Nana
ROH
    -sign up with story
    -more details next week
    -articles due March 13
    -Theme is poverty
Stephanie
    -School supply drive for Haiti
Aaron
    -Support concert (?) possible project
Hannah
    -Fashion show to raise awareness of HIV/AIDS (?) possible project
Dr. O
    -Theme for next UNESCO Conference is Health and Human Rights
One Voice Movement
    -Largest youth organization that fosters Israeli-Palestinian dialogue
    -March 2nd 4:30-6:30 PM
    -Cosponsoring event would probably entail advertising on our part
Adan
    -Wants to present in a couple weeks on Somaliland and Somalia
    -Wants to take on project on helping Somaliland gain International Recognition
Hannah's Presentation on Zimbabwe
    -Zimbabwe has big crisis with under nutrition, as a result leading to thousands of deaths
    -Zimbabwe economy is shambles
    -no freedom of press
    -Dr. O
        -Zimbabwe used to be bread basket of Africa, tragic that it has fallen so hard
        -Is there a project that can be done by SAHR to extend awareness of the issues in Zimbabwe?
        -Raising money for Zimbabwe could be considered, but done  in an apolitical fashion
MMS
    -Preliminary Schedule for MMS...soon to be confirmed
    -Meet in groups of what you want to do to work on workshops, sign up for first choices

Minutes Feb 12 2009

Present: Adan, Erinn, Abena, Julie, Romana, Sharielle, Jennifer, Amanda, Hannah, Nikki, Kara (duh!), Rafa, Simon, Dan, Jason

Today is Red Hand Day

    -Today in 2002 UN commissioned committee to reduce child soldier recruitment

Housing Rights

    -Interested in sending out letter of support

    -General template e-mail written

        -each person can tailor e-mail and send it. 

        -Rafa writes generic letter for housing by Sunday noon.

EATING

Reflection on trip to Cambridge MA last Friday

    - very inspirational person

    - described art and justice
    - supreme court designed differently from European counterparts
Newsletter presentation
April 3rd- UN trip to HRC sessions
Nikki's presentation- Darfur
    -Darfur Western Region of Sudan, in North of Sudan
    -Nobody can agree on how many civs killed
    -UN determined not officially a genocide
    -Darfur exaggerated?
        -many unknowns
        -Darfur has most refugees in world
MMS (Mansfield Middle School) and MDGs (Millennium Development Goals)
    -Sign up for times
    -make video with kids?
    -Topics based on MDGs
    -Dan will make Subject list for each class period
One Voice Movement
    -Israelis and Palestinians coming March 2nd with Arab student Association. 

Urgent Housing Appeal

Please check this out...

Dear friends,

I believe you remember that in Brazil I work with an organization which fights for housing rights in slums (favelas).

I currently work with a small favela called "Vila Acaba Mundo" (End of the World Village). My essay to the UNESCO forum described how my organization and the residents of the slum are struggling in order to have their housing rights observed.

Although we have a municipal law which guarantees that the area should be used to housing the poor population of the city, the real state sector is succeeding at reducing this area dramatically.

Currently 71 families are threatened with eviction, even though they have lived at “Vila Acaba Mundo” for over 60 years. They have nowhere to go.

Last year, we presented a law bill to the city legislative branch declaring that area as one of special social interest so that we could reduce the speculation over the area. The law passed unanimously. Unfortunately the first act of our new mayor was to veto that law.

However, the mayor did not think that the citizens would react to that veto. We are pressuring, but we have the real state sector against us. The main newspaper of the city has dedicated its main section to criticize our struggle.

The mayor’s secretaries have agreed to meet us and promised to expropriate (with compensation) the lands where people are threatened with eviction. However, they are taking too long to do that and we are afraid they are waiting so that it is no longer possible for us to promote the override of his veto.

Pressure is essential at this moment: we're in the media; the Village population – 350 families - is mobilized. We can't afford to let this moment go if we want this government to respect housing rights.

That's why I ask you all to send e-mails to our mayor showing that the international community demands respect for housing rights and that it is aware of what is going on at Vila Acaba Mundo, Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

We're sure that the support of your organizations can exert pressure over our mayor who is starting his mandate.

Send an e-mail to gabpref@pbh.gov.br and to smgo@pbh.gov.br

The name of the mayor is Márcio Lacerda. Make sure to mention that it is urgent for him to declare the expropriation of the area where people of Vila Acaba Mundo are threatened with eviction. If you prefer, you can sign the attached letter.

Send me a copy of your e-mails so that I can publish in the alternative media the support of the international community to our cause.

If you have any other ideas on how to pressure the mayor, please don't hesitate to contact me. I would appreciate if you could forward this message.

In the belief of a globalization of human rights movements,

Peace,

Raquel Portugal Nunes

Minutes-Feb 5 2009

Introductions
Present: Jason Abbott, Samantha Dolat, Jennifer Chevinsky, Nikki Rubin, Romana Heider, Dan Lin, Alana, Sharielle Applewhite, Adan Abbey, Hanna Etim-Gorst, Erinn Arbelaez, Stephanie Guirand, Allison Lex, Amanda Ploch, Simon Haley, Kara O'Brien, Rafael Pérez-Segura, Pronoma Srivastava, Shefali Mamak

Hoodies-Money must be in by Monday at UNESCO Office-$28.52
Art and Justice event: The Art of the Constitutional Court of South Africa

• meet on Friday at 3 PM in the Office of the UNESCO Chair

• Amanda, Hannah, Nikki, Erinn, Romana, Rafael, Kara, Shefali, Pronoma
• leave by 3 PM Friday
  

If interested in Middle School, e-mail schedule by Sunday evening to unescoambassador@uconn.edu

• sample workshop online
  

Discussion- Promises, ideas

• highly thought of
• some reservations on being out-of-date
• Many view points represented
• Hamas
• Shown very favorably
• doesn't address voting in of Hamas
• will we be able to handle being apolitical on topic?
• Erinn explains background behind Gaza-Israel video screening event
• Jenn offers idea of seeing Israeli-Palestinian children together
• Everyone please take a look at the website: www.onevoicemovement.org
• Israeli and Palestinian youth leaders coming Feb 28th-March 5th
• member leader for promises/onevoice movement=Erinn
  
• advertising
• advertise really well
• emphasize humanitarian issue
• Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)
• Romana brings up idea of panel discussions
• make fact oriented
  
• Adan
• Facts not agreed on by all sides

Daniel Lin and Barnaba Institute

• Asking to have a student endorse a play about Prostitution
• Around April 24th (but not the 24th)
• Institute would pay for space and plane ticket, but not necessarily for rooms at a hotel

MMS Workshops

• Literacy Around the World-definite workshop for this semester
• Ideas
• consistently talk about UNUDHR, Convention on the Rigths of the Child
  
• awareness->acceptance->understand->involvement/action (giving options, what you can do)
  
• be very specific
• child labor
• 3 facilitators
• Base workshops on Millennium Development Goals
• End Poverty and hunger
• Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
• Universal Education
• Gender Equality
• Environmental Sustainability
• Global Partnerships
• Child Health
• Maternal Health

Prison and Human Rights-Amanda Ploch

• Doing bible study at Correctional Facility near UConn Depot Campus
• volunteered in South Africa at a detention center
• has learned a lot about inmate's lives
• Recidivism
• real problem, many get out and come back again
• no better or worse off than when inmates first came in
  
• people need tools once they get out of prison
• Why do prisoners deserve taxpayer money to learn when our own schools don't have enough money?
• very difficult question
• answer unclear
• Discussion
• Sharielle- Who people hang around with once out of prison has a lot to do with how much chance they have of going back
• to answer about who deserves taxpayer money, it should be who wants it more.
• idea-network of organizations that specialize in hiring back people who were imprisoned or wrongfully accused of something  
• has relative that has had to deal with the stigma of going to jail now that he's out
  
• Hannah
• prisoners dynamic in personalities
• asks: more expensive to keep people in jail than to educate them?
• Jail per capita costs $22,000, education costs will pay themselves back over and over again
  
• Amanda
• no continuity between prison system and transition to society
• Would choose to educate the person in prison because person in jail to begin with because law abiding student would generally have a better chance to figure stuff out
  
• Dan
  
• clarification-recidivism means going back to jail, not necessarily back to crime 
• Adan
• American prisons a shame
• US holds self to higher standards
• people come back many times worse than before.
• Shefali
• many prisoners sometimes encouraged to do crime again out of desperation
• change is difficult
• Simon
• Asks: What actually happens when people get released? 
  
• Amanda answers: Programs about only a year long, not enough time for most people to adapt again
• Ask: Government incentives to have companies rehire people who have proved themselves out of prison
• Amanda answer: doesn't really know, but it seems like a good idea. 
  
• there actually is a bakery that hires many ex-convicts who actually stay there
• important to recognize when ex-convicts are really willing to make change their ways
  

Play to be presented in question poster (look at latest minutes)

The World March for Peace and Non-violence

Oct 2, 2009 - Jan 2, 2010

"Because we can end world hunger with 10% of what is spent on arms.
Imagine how life would be if 30-50% of the arms budget went toward improving people's lives instead of being used for destruction."

The World March for Peace and Non-violence, is an international project that will start in New-Zealand on October 2nd of 2009, and will arrive in Punta de Vacas, Argentina, on January 2nd of 2010, after crossing 90 countries around the world! It is an initiative of the NGO "World Without Wars", which is organizing it at the international level. There are many organizations and volunteers working on it locally in many countries. The project has received so far a very high number of supports, from citizens all over the world, universities, NGOs, politicians, institutions, intellectuals, artists etc.


The web site of the World March is: www.marchamundial.org/en

Minutes - January 29, 2009

January 29, 2009 - Student Ambassadors for Human Rights Meeting
Minutes recorded by Erinn

Dr. O’s welcome:
- UNESCO Chair regards us as a group of very special students

Student Visibility on campus:
- Abena, Hanna*, Jason, Erinn, Rafael and Pronoma expressed interest in having a subcommittee led by Dan that would focus on getting our name out there. The committee would email each other, possibly meet a few minutes earlier, etc.
-Possibly design a new poster to advertise SAHRs

Promises:
-look into showing it at the Dodd Center on a Thursday around 7:00 possibly during the last week in March and the first two weeks of April, the best week is probably the first in April
-everyone should watch the movie by next week’s meeting

New Meeting Times:
-meetings will now be 5:00-7:00pm every week with dinner

February 6th, 2009 Justice Albie Sachs of South Africa will be giving a presentation on The Art of the Constitutional Court of South Africa at 6:00pm in Cambridge at Harvard University- there will be a survey sent out to see who wants to go

Rafa’s Topic: “Two Sides of a Border: One Violent, One Peaceful.”
Article from The New York Times by James C. McKinley.Published: January 22, 2009. Available: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/23/us/23elpaso.html?scp=1&sq=%93Two%20Sides%20of%20a%20Border:%20One%20Violent,%20One%20Peaceful%94%20&st=cse

-Drug trafficking violence is much stronger on the Mexican side of the border, most likely because Mexico is very militaristically trying to crack down on drug dealing
-There is a big power vacuum in Latin America about who is going to control the drug trafficking industry because the demand is still very high but there was a huge crack down on drug trafficking in Colombia and the Caribbean so a lot of drugs started being brought through Mexico.
-In the North it is like a war zone with innocent people dying. People trying to help, like aid workers from the Red Cross, are being attacked.
-Links between this situation and what’s happening in Afghanistan with opium – farmers switching from growing food crops to drugs. Rafa makes the point that what needs to be addressed is educating people in the U.S.A., Europe, etc. that the drugs they’re using have these other negative effects on the people that are being basically forced to supply the drug to them.