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WELLESLEY,
Mass. -- Wellesley College will host a Social Science
Conference, "Global Social Responsibility?" Friday,
April 30, and Saturday, May 1.
On
Friday at 7:30 pm in Jewett Auditorium, a panel discussion
will examine the topic of "Responsibility to Protect," bringing
together some of the leading figures working with and within
the United Nations. Speakers include Thomas G. Weiss, the
principal intellectual contributor to International Commission
on Intervention and State Sovereignty; Antonio Donini,
the Director of UN Humanitarian Assistance in Afghanistan
from 1999 to 2002 and Norah Niland who has just returned
from Liberia where she was in charge of protection and
displacement issues.
"These are three of the leading figures in this field
and we expect a very lively discussion that will take us
from historical cases (Rwanda, the Holocaust, Kosovo) to
the debates about the current intervention in Iraq," said
conference organizer Craig Murphy, a political science
professor at Wellesley.
In
2001, under the urging of the U.N. Secretary General
and with the support of the Canadian government, an outstanding
committee of global social leaders, the "International
Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty," developed
a coherent, unified position that could come to guide Security
Council action as well as the moral action of individual
states that have taken responsibility when the Security
Council has been unable to act.
"The idea of a global 'Responsibility to Protect'
has become the major way in which leaders in the U.N.,
the governments of a number of significant countries and
many contemporary philosophers have attempted to reconcile
the conflicting moral imperatives that have existed in
so many post-Cold War humanitarian disasters from Rwanda
to Iran," said Murphy. "On the one hand, there
is the standard demand of international law that states
not intervene in the international affairs of other sovereign
states. On the other hand, at least since the foundation
of the U.N., the international community has affirmed a
responsibility to intervene stop gross violations of human
rights."
Saturday offers the following events, all in Pendleton
East building:
- 8:30-9
am: Coffee
in Pendleton Atrium
- 9-10:30
am:
- "Children,
Genocide and War" with
David Bourn, Save the Children; Cathering Newbury,
Smith College; Joe Swingle, quantitative reasoning,
Wellesley.
- Labor
Tragedies and Corporate Responsiblities" with
Steven Lize, University of Mississippi;
Katharine Redford and Ka Hsaw Wa, EarthRights
International; Ann Congleton,
philosophy, Wellesley.
- 10:30-11
am: Coffee Break, Atrium
- 11
am-12:30 pm:
- "Health,
Education and Nutrition" with
Patrice Engle, UNICEF;
Dean Robinson, University of Massachusetts;
Karin Lapping, Save
the Children; Barbara Beatty, education,
Wellesley
- "Humanity,
Global Governance, and
the Environment" with
Peter M. Haas, University
of Massachusetts; Elizabeth
De Sombre,
environmental studies,
Wellesley.
- 12:30-1:30
pm: Lunch, Pendleton
Atrium
- 1:30-3:30
pm:
- "Women
and Globalization:
Trade as Liberator?" with
Isabella Bakker,
York University;
Ana Eiras,
Heritage Foundation;
Julie Matthaei,
economics, Wellesley
- "The
Cutting Edges
of International Law:
The WTO,
the International Criminal Court, and
Advances
in Human
Rights" with
Rorden Wilkinson,
University
of Manchester;
John Washburn,
American
NGO Coalition on
the International
Criminal
Court.
- 3:15-5
pm:
- Careers
and Volunteer Opportunities
in
Global Social Responsibility
(and
tea), Pendleton Atrium.
For more information or to make a reservation for lunch,
visit the conference Web site at www.wellesley.edu/Peace/GSR/agenda.html.
Since 1875, Wellesley College has been a leader in providing
an excellent liberal-arts education for women who will
make a difference in the world. Its 500-acre campus near
Boston is home to 2,300 undergraduate students from all
50 states and 68 countries. For more information, go to
www.wellesley.edu.
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