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Events

Upcoming Events

Past Events

  • Expert Meeting: The MDGs: Who's Accountable, organized by CESR and the OHCHR, Geneva, November 2-3, 2011. The meeting brought together a diverse group of leading human rights and development practioners, academics, civil society leaders and development economists to discuss lessons learnt from the MDG experience and how human rights accountability can be strengthened in development with an eye to the post-2015 agenda.
  • Human Rights and Development: Taking Stock, Moving Forward, organized by CESR and Realizing Rights, New York, September 24, 2010. Realizing Rights founder and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, along with CESR Board Chair Alicia Ely Yamin, co-chaired the forum, “Human Rights and Development: Taking Stock, Moving Forward.” More than 50 representatives from various organizations, including NGOs, educational institutions and philanthropic foundations, attended the forum, which took place at the Ford Foundation in New York.
  • “Informal Interactive Hearings of the General Assembly with Non-governmental organizations, Civil society organizations and the Private sector”, UN General Assembly, New York, 14-15 June, 2010. CESR was one of more than 300 civil society organizations that participated in the hearings, aimed at providing civil society input into the preparatory process for the UN Summit on the MDGs in September 2010. Participants made a range of proposals and recommendations to UN member states, including a strong call for a human rights-centred approach to MDG implementation. They emphasised the need to hold governments accountable for the ESC rights obligations underpinning the MDGs, and the need for greater attention to discrimination and disparities in progress. NGOs also highlighted the harmful human rights impact of the global financial crisis and the unsustainable economic model which gave rise to it. The proposals and recommendations are included in a summary document which will be considered by UN member states as they negotiate the draft outcome document of the September summit
  • “Human Rights: Foundation for Progress on the MDGs”, organized by Amnesty International and Realizing Rights, New York, 9 and 10 June 2010. The conference brought together human rights and development experts from NGOs and inter-governmental organizations, as well as government representatives, with the aim of intensifying efforts to integrate human rights into the MDG process. Speakers and participants identified concrete ways in which human rights could be put at the centre of the action plan to emerge from the September summit.  These are summarised in the communiqué issued by the organizers following the meeting. CESR’s Executive Director, Ignacio Saiz, was one of several speakers at the round-table on Health and Education for All, along with Daniel Seymour from UNICEF, Hedda Samson from the Netherlands Mission to the UN, and Eric Friedman from Physicians for Human Rights. Ignacio spoke of the concrete difference that a human rights approach can make to the framing of health and education goals, the setting of targets, the identification of policy interventions, the allocation of resources and how incompliance is remedied.
  • Women Deliver Conference: “Delivering Solutions for Girls and Women”, Washington DC, June 2010. This international event attracted world attention and it was a call to action for the achievement of MDG5. CESR participated in a panel organized by Amnesty International on measuring progress on maternal mortality. Alicia Yamin, Chair of CESR's Board, delivered a presentation on behalf of this organization. This presentation offered participants the opportunity to learn about and discuss the operationalization of CESR's monitoring methodology to evaluate governments' efforts to fulfil women's human right to safe motherhood.
  • “La pobreza: la peor crisis de los Derechos Humanos/Poverty: the worst human rights crisis”, organized by Amnesty International Spain, Madrid, May 2010. CESR Executive Director Ignacio Saiz was one of 5 panellists at an event on poverty and human rights hosted by Amnesty International Spain at the CaixaForum in Madrid. The event highlighted how poverty is both a cause and consequence of human rights violations, and explored the role and responsibilities of the corporate sector. Ignacio gave a critical examination of the opportunities for human rights accountability in the context of the Millennium Development Goals.
  • “3rd ‘States General’ of Development Cooperation: The Millennium Development Goals. How to step up the efforts?”, organized by Kingdom of Belgium  Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation, Brussels, 4th May 2010. It was a meeting for the Belgian government with the aim of a pre-discussion in advance of the September MDG summit. The Belgian government, which will be taking over leadership of the EU shortly, publicly reaffirmed its commitment to MDGs. CESR's Sally-Anne Way delivered a presentation on whether the MDGs reflected 'what is essential in development', pointing to the bigger political context that is not reflected, and analysing failures to fulfil the MDGs in terms of government failures to guarantee rights
  • Symposium “Millennium Development Goals and Human Rights”, hosted by The Human Rights Program - Harvard Law School, United Nations OHCHR, UNICEF, Norwegian Centre for Human Rights - University of Oslo, Livelihoods in Developing Countries (LEVE) and Institute of Development Studies, at Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, 22 and 23 March 2010. The symposium brought together scholars and practitioners in the fields of human rights and development to explore whether and how human rights could be better integrated into the next stages of the MDG process. The aim was for participants to use the outcomes of the discussion in advocacy and policy-making in their different settings. CESR Board Chair Alicia Yamin, Global Health and Human Rights Fellow at Harvard Law School, was one of the organizers and hosts of the symposium, as well as presenting on the issue of human rights accountability in the context of efforts to promote safe motherhood. CESR consultant Jeremy Perelman, Lecturer in Law at Columbia University, attended on behalf of CESR, sharing the insights gained in Guatemala and elsewhere on the challenges and opportunities for advancing a human rights agenda through the MDGs.
  • “UN Development Group MDG Peer Review Workshop”, organized by MDG Task Force, UN Development Group, in New York, February 2010. The meeting had the purpose of reviewing the thematic papers produced by the UNDG MDG Task Force on MDGs 1-7, as part of the UN inter-agency input to the September Summit. CESR Executive Director, Ignacio Saiz, and the Executive Director of Realizing Rights, Heather Grady, were invited to attend the review meeting as human rights resource persons. Ignacio and Heather provided substantive comments on the thematic papers, both during the discussions and in writing, aimed at strengthening their human rights analysis. The final version of the thematic papers, as well as further information on the UNDG MDG Task Force can be found here.
  • “Human Rights and the MDGs”, The Hague, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 25-26 May 2009. The aim of the seminar was to identify concrete ways in which donors can use human rights instruments to promote fulfilment of the MDGs, especially for the poorest and most vulnerable groups. It was attended by international human rights and development experts from UN and donor agencies, NGOs and academic institutions. CESR Executive Director Ignacio Saiz gave a presentation on CESR’s experience of advocating for human rights accountability in the context of the MDGs in Guatemala.  He spoke as part of a panel on human rights, inequality and MDGs in Guatemala, along with Guatemalan sexual and reproductive rights advocate Mirna Montenegro and AnneMarie de Ruiter of the Dutch embassy in Guatemala. Guatemala was one of two country case studies chosen by the organizers, along with Kenya. The panel generated great interest in the methodologies presented for integrating human rights considerations into monitoring and accountability frameworks for the goal on maternal mortality. The report of the seminar can be found here. 
  • “Right to Food Forum”, organized by Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, Rome, October 1-3, 2008. The forum’s purpose was to assist Members in the implementation of the Right to Food Guidelines.  (http://www.fao.org/righttofood/rtf_forum/index_en.html).  CESR's Sally-Anne Way participated in this meeting, particularly in the session on benchmarks and indicators. This drew on CESR's work on monitoring ESCR rights, on implementation of the right to food in practice and contributed to the goal of broadening dissemination and understanding of the commitments of governments towards the right to food.
  • “Dialogues for action: Human Rights and MDGs,” Africa Regional Dialogue, organized by the OHCHR, UNICEF, University of Oslo and South African Human Rights Commission, Johannesburg, 9-10 September 2008. The meeting had the objective of bringing together stakeholders from different countries to define rights-based approaches to the MDGs. CESR  produced a background report (Sally-Anne Way, 2008, "Human rights and MDG 1C on Hunger") which fed into the OHCHR's 2008 publication "MDGS and Human Rights in Practice" (PDF download) that came out of this meeting. CESR's Sally-Anne Way led a workshop on the right to adequate food and MDG 1 on Hunger, further developing recent work on indicators for the right to food in ways that could be applied for MDG monitoring purposes - which enabled CESR to advocate before a range of government and NGO actors that MDG implementation of the reduction of hunger should be understood as a human rights obligation.
  • “Monitoring Human Rights and the MDGs: the Quest for Coherence”, expert consultation organized by OHCHR in Geneva, 16-17 June 2008. The event focused on improving monitoring frameworks for the MDGs from a human rights perspective. CESR presented its experience on quantitative monitoring methods for monitoring compliance of the realization of economic and social rights. CESR advocated for the greater integration of human rights into MDG implementation, with the suggestion that MDG monitoring could be adapted for the monitoring of ESC rights.