Introducing Sarah Paoletti & Nicole Phillips

It's our great pleasure to welcome Sarah Paoletti and Nicole Phillips as IntLawGrrls contributors.
► Sarah (top right) directs the Transnational Legal Clinic at the University of Pennsylvania Law School in Philadelphia, where she's also a Practice Associate Professor of Law. (prior posts) Before beginning work at this international human rights and immigration clinic, she taught at American University Washington College of Law – in the International Human Rights Law Clinic, as well as a seminar on the labor and employment rights of immigrant workers. As reflected in her numerous publications, Sarah's areas of specialty include international human rights, migrant and immigrant rights, asylum law, and labor and employment. She has presented on the rights of migrant workers before the United Nations and the Organization of American States, and also works closely with advocates seeking application of international human rights norms in the United States. On behalf of the US Human Rights Network, Sarah coordinated civil society participation in the U.N. Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review of the United States.
► Nicole (middle right) is a Staff Attorney at the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, which, in a lawsuit against the United Nations, represents more than 5,000 victims of a cholera epidemic that has broke out since the January 12, 2010, earthquake in Port-au-Prince. Nicole joined the Institute after the earthquake; before that, she'd been a partner in a union labor firm, Weinberg, Roger & Rosenfeld in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she served as general counsel to unions and employee benefit trust funds across the country, arbitrated collective bargaining disputes, and managed a caseload in federal and state courts involving labor, employment, health insurance, and environmental regulations.
An Adjunct Professor and Assistant Director for Haiti programs at the University of San Francisco School of Law, also the home institution of IntLawGrrls contributors Connie de la Vega and Michelle Leighton. Nicole is a member of the Board of Directors of Human Rights Advocates, a Berkeley-based nongovernmental organization. She has appeared before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Human Rights Counsel, Human Rights Committee, Committee on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination, and Commission on the Status of Women on various human rights issues.
In their post below, which appears on the 2d anniversary of the earthquake that devastated Haiti, Nicole and Sarah outline the Universal Periodic Review that the Human Rights Council is examining Haiti's human rights record. Complementing it is Amy Senier's post above on the quake's aftermath.
Sarah and Nicole dedicate their post to Sonia Pierre (left), with whom Nicole had the pleasure of working both in the Dominican Republic and at the United Nations. Born 48 years ago in a "batey – the name given to settlements for sugar cane cutters working for the Dominican sugar industry" – Pierre was among 12 children in a family of Haitian descent. At age 13, Pierre led a march for workers' rights, and so was arrested for the 1st time, jailed for a day, and threatened with deportation to Haiti. Thus began a career of human rights activism that included the founding of the Movement of Dominican Women of Haitian Descent. Pierre died from a heart attack on December 4, 2011. In 2006, she had been honored as a Human Rights Laureate by the D.C.-based Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, which has established a Memorial Fund for her family.
Today Pierre joins other honorees on IntLawGrrls' transnational foremothers page.

Heartfelt welcome!

On the Job! RFK Center fellow

(On the Job! pays occasional notice to interesting intlaw job notices)

The 4-decades-old, Washington, D.C.-based Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights welcomes applications for its inaugural Donald M. Wilson Fellowship for an outstanding recent graduate.
The first Donald M. Wilson Fellow will work with the center’s 2011 Human Rights Award Laureate, and will participate in the 2012 Human Rights Award nomination and selection process.
The single-year fellowship, which provides a stipend and benefits, is named after a Life magazine journalist who was a close friend of Kennedy and served as Deputy Director of the U.S. Information Agency.
Deadline to apply for the position, which begins this September, is July 29, 2011. Details here.

Darfur report reviewed

Pleased to note that the report on Darfur just published by the California International Law Center at King Hall, University of California, Davis, School of Law, and the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights is the subject of this article at NL-Aid, a website that today joins our "connections" list at right.
After describing the contents of the report -- entitled Toward Peace with Justice in Darfur: A Framework for Accountability -- author Cassandra Clifford, founder and executive director of the Bridge to Freedom Foundation, concludes:

[W]hile this report will clearly have an impact, efforts to bring a full-scale peace are sadly not striking deep enough, as the continuous suffering and killing in Darfur rages on. As an international community we have, and are, continuing to fail the people of Darfur, as only a handful of activists and international aid actors have stood untied against the genocide and continuing sexual violence. As the people countless, mostly women, children and elderly remain displaced and under threat of food shortage, disease and violence true peace lies deep in the shadows. However the forward and extensive thinking to address the long-term impacts of the future will make great strides in easing the peoples burden as well as to prevent future atrocities.

Guest Blogger: Monika Kalra Varma

Honored to welcome Monika Kalra Varma (right) as IntLawGrrls' guest blogger today.
Monika is the Director of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights in Washington, D.C., where she develops and oversees programming, day-to-day operations, longterm strategies. (Prior IntLawGrrls posts.)
Since joining the center in 2002, she's spearheaded innovative economic and social rights advocacy, including efforts to hold international actors accountable for extraterritorial economic rights violations. Advocacy campaigns she's led have targeted the United Nations and its member states, various branches of the U.S. government, members of the Organization of American States and other regional bodies, international financial institutions, and corporations.
Monika serves on the editorial board of Health and Human Rights: An International Journal, published by the Harvard-based François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, and she is a steering committee member of the Lawyers Emergency Response Network for Haiti. She is also a member of the advisory board for the Global India Fund.
She speaks regularly with policymakers and members of civil society about domestic and international human rights issues, and has published commentary in, to name a few, the Boston Globe, the Guardian, the Huffington Post, and Jurist.
Today she contributes to IntLawGrrls. Monika's guest post below discusses her recent visit to Western Sahara as part of an RFK Center delegation -- a visit that produced a just-published report.
Prior to joining the RFK Center, Monika worked at The Hague. As a legal officer in the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, she was a member of the trial team which secured the ICTY's first indictment and eventual conviction of the crime of terror. Accused, and eventually convicted, was General Stanislav Galić, the Serb military commander in Sarajevo from 1992-1994.
Monika earned her B.A. degree from the University of California, San Diego, and her J.D. from the University of California, Davis, School of Law. Indeed, I'm proud to say that she is a former student of mine, and the author while a student of a pathbreaking article, "Forced Marriage: Rwanda’s Secret Revealed," 7 University of California Davis Journal of International Law & Policy 197 (2001). We're been honored to name her a featured alumna on the website of our California International Law Center at King Hall, and also to work with her on the Darfur Project (described in posts available here) undertaken jointly between CILC and the RFK Center.
A truly heartfelt welcome!

Monitoring rights abuses in Western Sahara

(Thanks to IntLawGrrls for the opportunity to contribute this guest post)

In January, a delegation from the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights, led by prominent Sahrawi activist Aminatou Haidar, 2008 recipient of the RFK Center's Human Rights Award, found evidence of human rights abuses that Moroccan government forces have inflicted on civilians in Western Sahara. (credit for 2009 Borja Suarez/Reuters photo of Haidar) Regularly referred to as the "Sahrawi Gandhi," Aminatou is one of the most prominent human rights defenders in Western Sahara -- as IntLawGrrls have posted, a region in northwest Africa (below left) occupied by Morocco.
Our delegation comprised Lynn Delaney, Executive Director of the RFK Center, Advocacy Officer Mary Beth Gallagher, and myself, the Director of the Center for Human Rights.
Many of our meetings focused on abuses that ensued from last November's dismantling of the Gdaim Izik protest camp, which houses 12,000 displaced Sahrawis, and the aftermath in the following weeks and months. We interviewed dozens of people who were victims of abuse, torture, and imprisonment, along with witnesses and family members.
We also met with representatives of the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara, which has operated in the region since 1991. MINURSO was created to oversee the ceasefire between Morocco and the Polisario Front (the representative of the Sahrawi people) and to implement a referendum on self-determination. Two decades later, this referendum has not occurred, and widespread human rights abuses by the Moroccan government persist. MINURSO remains the only modern-day peacekeeping mission in the world without a human rights mandate.
Our accounts have been compiled into a new report. Entitled Western Sahara: Accounts of Human Rights Abuses Persist in Wake of November Unrest, it is available, in English, French, and Spanish, here.
The report reinforces the need for international human rights monitoring in West Sahara.
It includes several stories of human rights violations, including that of 15 young men who disappeared in 2005 and have yet to be accounted for. Their families told us that repeated complaints to government officials have led nowhere. When we inquired about the case, the government told us that their family members had "drowned in the sea."
We were told about human rights defenders who were sent to a military prison hundreds of miles away from their homes and brutally beaten. Lawyers and recently released detainees spoke about the use of fraudulent evidence and forced confessions, and about the failure to treat serious medical conditions in prisons -- all acts that violate Morocco's own laws.
Looking for all sides of the story, we spoke to the Moroccan government as well. We were told unequivocally that the government does not use torture and that any reports of torture would be duly investigated. But defense lawyers told us they have repeatedly lodged complaints, only to have them ignored.
This report will be disseminated to lawmakers, advocates, and civil society in order to encourage greater protection of human rights in Western Sahara.

On the Job! RFK Fellowship

(On the Job! pays occasional notice to interesting intlaw job notices)

The D.C.-based Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, about which we've frequently posted, is seeking applications for its 2010-2011 Social Justice Fellowship, which provides invaluable training and experience for a recent law school graduate preparing for a career in human rights. The 1-year position will begin this September.
Duties include, but are not limited to, conducting extensive research on behalf of the the 2010 RFK Human Rights Award laureate and working with the RFK Center Director and staff to develop long-term strategies in support of that laureate.

Qualifications sought include: experience with domestic and international human rights mechanisms; working knowledge of the U.N. and human rights systems; communications and interpersonal skills. Fluency in Spanish, French or Arabic is strongly preferred. Application deadline is August 27, 2010; details here.

Darfur in D.C. today

"Toward a Comprehensive Strategy for Sudan" is the title of today's hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The session begins at 10 Eastern time this morning at 419 Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, and should also be available on webcast and C-SPAN.
Scheduled witnesses include Dr. Mohammed Ahmed (left), a Darfuri physician and peacemaker who's been honored as a Human Rights Laureate by the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights. Earlier this year Dr. Mohammed visited the California International Law Center at King Hall, of which yours truly is director, to meet with students working on our ongoing joint RFK-CILC Darfur Project on transitional justice.
Also set to testify before the Foreign Relations Committee are: retired Air Force Major General Scott Gration, the President's Special Envoy to Sudan; Earl Gast, Acting Assistant Administrator for Africa at the U.S. Agency for International Development; Dr. David Shinn, former Ambassador to Burkina Faso and to Ethiopia, and now an Adjunct Professor in international affairs at George Washington University; and Susan Page (right), formerly head of the Rule of Law program for the U.N. Mission in Sudan and now Regional Director for Southern and East Africa Programs for the National Democratic Institute.
The hearing provides an occasion for review of recent developments respecting Sudan (prior IntLawGrrls posts). For example:
► Earlier this month, a 5-member arbitration tribunal issued its resolution of a boundary dispute between the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army, respecting the Abyei Area in South Sudan. Some in the south are said to have warned they may appeal the decision, which drew a line through the oil-rich region.
► Respecting the western region of Darfur, the indictment by the International Criminal Court of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir continues to stir controversy. Via a resolution at the African Union summit earlier this month, many leaders rallied on Bashir's behalf and railed against the ICC and its Prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo. But just this week, Bashir was a no-show at an African summit in Uganda. Reports are that Bashir's scheduled visit was "blocked" by President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, an ICC member state. The move follows the apparent notice to Bashir that he might face arrest if he attended the inauguration of South African President Jacob Zuma of South Africa, also an ICC member state. Yet the policy of Zuma's government remains unclear. And as our Opinio Juris colleague Kevin Jon Heller's noted, Botswana's said it would adhere to its ICC obligations if the indictee entered its jurisdiction.
► Some maintain that it's not only Africa that's in disarray, but that the same could be said of Sudan policy in the United States. Last month Gration said "that the Sudanese government is no longer engaging in a 'coordinated' campaign of mass murder in Darfur," but rather what's occurring now is "' the remnants of genocide.'" The Washington Post's Colum Lynch saw in the remarks evidence of "an emerging rift between Gration and Susan E. Rice [below right], the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who accused the Sudanese leadership of genocide as recently as two days ago." An op-ed writer agreed. In testimony yesterday at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on peacekeeping, however, Rice spoke favorably of Gration's mission; her focus was pressing Sudan to allow more aid workers into Darfur. Her prepared statement included these words:

Darfur is about the size of California, with a pre-war population of 6.5 million. Only twenty thousand peacekeepers are inherently limited in their ability to patrol territory so vast, and to protect so many civilians. Imagine how much more difficult their task becomes when the host government actively hinders their efforts, the parties balk at cease-fire talks, and the peacekeepers are deployed below their full operating capacity.

Bottom line:The Committee's Senators will have much to talk about today.

Congrats to IntLawGrrl Kathleen Doty

Am honored to announce the appointment of IntLawGrrl Kathleen Doty (left) as the inaugural Fellow of the California International Law Center at King Hall (CILC), University of California, Davis, School of Law.
Author of yesterday's post on the California Supreme Court's ruling on Proposition 8, as well as other posts concentrating on human rights and global health policy, Kathleen will begin her fellowship this fall after finishing her clerkship with a judge on the Hawai`i Intermediate Court of Appeals.
As the CILC Fellow she will give invaluable scholarly and administrative help to the Center, launched this past February with yours truly as founding Director (prior posts). CILC aims to foster the work of California-Davis faculty, students, and alumni in international, comparative, and transnational law, through speakers’ series and conferences, curricular and career development. Key components are our partnerships, among them our Darfur Project undertaken with the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights.
Kathleen is eminently qualified for the position, having excelled in international legal studies while in law school. In 2008, the same year she earned her J.D. from California-Davis, she:
► served as both coach and advocate for the Jessup International Moot Court Team, which advanced to international rounds in Washington, D.C.; and
► was honored as 1st runner-up in the National Lesbian and Gay Law Association Michael Greenberg Student Writing Competition for an article just published as From Fretté to E.B.: The European Court of Human Rights on Gay and Lesbian Adoption, 18 Law & Sexuality 121 (2009), at "Global Arc of Justice: Sexual Orientation Law Around the World," a conference convened by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law and the International Lesbian and Gay Law Association.
She was graduated cum laude from Smith College with a major in Latin American Studies and a minor in Film Studies. Fluent in Spanish and proficient in French, she worked with community organizations in the Hispanic and French Caribbean, and studied abroad at La Universidad de la Habana in Cuba. She is a founding member of the Hawai’i Lesbian and Gay Legal Association.
Heartfelt congratulations!

Call for regional approach to Darfur

Often "Darfur" appears as some disembodied phenomenon -- a crisis out of context.
In fact, of course, the word is shorthand for a complex, multiyear, multilayered conflict. Violence occurs not in some stand-alone time and space, but rather against the backdrop of issues that span all of Sudan.
Even this broad a view is too narrow. Just as violence in Darfur must be considered within the context of Sudan, troubles in Sudan must be considered within the context of the northern/eastern quadrant of Africa.
Thus in "Beyond Band-Aids for Darfur," a Huffington Post op-ed, our colleague Monika Kalra Varma recently argued:

A strong U.S. special envoy to Sudan, Major General Scott Gration, has been named, sending a message to Khartoum, but an equally strong message must be sent to Chad. The new administration must entrust Maj. Gen. Gration with a broad mandate to confront the interrelated problems in both Sudan and Chad to find regional solutions for peace, similar to the current approach to Pakistan and Afghanistan. He must be able to deal with all actors in the region, including not only governments and rebels, but also tribal, civil society, refugee and IDP leaders.

This call for a regional approach by Varma, Director for the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights, reflects a policy paper that the RFK Center issued during the recent U.S. visits of 2 of its Human Rights Laureates, Delphine Djiraibe, a Chadian attorney and human rights advocate, and Dr. Mohammed Ahmed Abdallah, a Darfuri physician. (Am honored to note that among the places that Dr. Mohammed Ahmed visited was the California International Law Center at King Hall, University of California, Davis, School of Law, where he gave a public talk and met privately with the 40-plus students who are taking part in a CILC-RFK partnership aimed at developing a framework for peace and reconciliation processes.) Entitled "The Need for a Regional Approach to Solve the Crisis in Sudan, Chad and the Central African Republic," the paper notes the sad statistics respecting deaths and displacement in Darfur, and stresses that the negative consequences of conflict cross borders into Chad and Central African Republic. Accordingly, the paper contends, peace negotiations must engage all 3 countries. Such negotiations, moreover, must bring to the table not only the government and rebels, but also tribal and other leaders in civil society.
A key component of any such effort, both Varma's op-ed and the policy paper maintain, is U.S. expansion of the special envoy's mandate to assure that Darfur is considered in comprehensive context.

(credit for 2007 BBC regional map)

On the Job! RFK Center Advocacy Advisor

(On the Job! pays occasional notice to interesting intlaw job notices) The Washington, D.C.-based Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights, which has worked to achieve social justice since its establishment 4 decades ago (prior IntLawGrrls posts), is seeking applications for an Advocacy Officer.
Primary duties of the Advocacy Office will include working with the Center's Human Rights Award laureates to develop and implement joint domestic and international legal, advocacy and communications strategies to achieve laureates’ social change goals by, among other things, initiating and leading comprehensive research projects to support the laureates’ strategies.
Qualifications sought:
► J.D. degree or equivalent, with at least 3 years' experience in human rights or the legislative arena;
► Experience with domestic and international human rights mechanisms;
► Working knowledge of U.S. Congressional legislative process, the United Nations system, regional human rights systems, and multi-lateral institutions, coupled with an ability to maintain active contacts with key stakeholders in all 4 systems and their staff in order to support the goals and objectives of the RFK Human Rights Award laureates; and
► Excellent written and verbal communication skills; and, preferably,
► Knowledge of Sudan, Darfur, Western Sahara, and U.S. domestic human rights issues, plus fluency in Arabic and French.
Deadline is this Friday, April 10, 2009. To apply, e-mail (subject line "Advocacy Officer Position") a cover letter, resume, writing sample, and 3 references to Fernanda Katz Ellenberg at ellenberg@rfkcenter.org.

Someone give Kristof the U.N. Charter

A recent column by New York Times writer Nicholas Kristof included the following paragraph:

President Obama could also announce that from now on, when Sudan violates the U.N. ban on offensive military flights in Darfur by bombing villagers, we will afterward destroy a Sudanese military aircraft on the ground in Darfur (we can do this from our base in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa).

Huh?

Kristof deserves credit for his columns, which repeatedly pique public consciousness -- and consciences -- about human rights violations in the 3d World and, on occasion, here at home. But paragraphs like that quoted above sap his efforts.

As all international lawyers know, for a country to enter another's air space and destroys its property likely violate the pledge, contained in Article 2(4) of the U.N. Charter, that it shall

refrain in [its] international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

The Charter expressly exempts from this ban uses of force that:

► qualify as individual or collective self-defense meeting all requirements of Article 51 of the Charter (requirements that guest/alumna Valerie Epps analyzed in her recent post); or

► are sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council pursuant to Chapter VII of the Charter.

Neither exception would cover the scenario that Kristof proposes:

► Self-defense does not apply for the simple reason that Darfur is not a U.N. member state; it represents yet another tragic example of a state attacking its own populace.

► There seems almost no chance that all 5 permanent members of the Security Council would vote to authorize the use of force.

One presumes that Kristof -- or whoever suggested this scenario to him -- is operating on the assumption that such a U.S. military foray could be justified as an exercise of humanitarian intervention or its younger sibling, responsibility to protect. Put to one side the fact that just because a state can do something does not mean that it should. Put to one side as well the fact that taking out a Sudanese military jet seems far more like old-fashioned reprisal than an act promising to advance a humanitarian goal. The core legal problem is that no international law -- no customary norm, no treaty provision -- allows either humanitarian intervention or intervention in service of a responsibility to protect. Even commentators favorable to articulation of such a law often limit its scope to genocide, and, rightly or not, both a U.N. Commission of Inquiry and a panel of the International Criminal Court have refused to label the horrors in Darfur genocide.

There seems little doubt that other international offenses -- crimes against humanity and war crimes -- have occurred in Darfur. (map credit) No doubt, then, that the crisis in Darfur deserves all our best efforts. That's why the 1st venture of our California International Law Center at King Hall, UC Davis School of Law, is to partner with the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights to craft a framework for peace and reconciliation in that troubled region of Sudan. (See here and here.)

But those who argue for unauthorized military strikes do not make use of best efforts.

Rather than urge yet another American President to order unilateral military action, humanitarians ought to push for collective solutions achieved within the bounds of law.

California International Law Center launch

This Wednesday will mark yet another inauguration -- that is, the Inaugural Celebration of the California International Law Center at King Hall, the newest initiative of my home institution, the University of California, Davis, School of Law. Am proud to say that Dean Kevin R. Johnson has named yours truly founding Director of the Center, which we've short-named CILC (pronounced "silk").
Our February 4 noon-hour kickoff, cosponsored by the Black Law Students Association and the International Law Society, will feature a very special program (tape to be posted at our new website). 1st, opening remarks from Kevin and me. Then we'll hear about the Global Vision & Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., from Dr. Clayborne Carson (left), Professor of History and founding Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute at Stanford University, and editor of the King papers. Dr. Carson will talk from an international perspective about the namesake of our law school, Dr. King, who in 1964 became the youngest person ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize, and who later invoked international law to explain his opposition to the Vietnam War.
Indeed, in a speech delivered 7 years before the Peace Prize, King himself linked civil rights at home to human rights abroad. He asked:

As we move to make justice a reality on the international scale, as we move to make justice a reality in this nation, how will the struggle be waged?

Events, projects, and programs of CILC will work toward answers:
► The new Center's already cosponsored -- along with the Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas and College of Letters & Sciences at the University of California, Davis, the International Justice Network, New York, and the National Litigation Project at Yale Law School -- a 2-day exploratory discussion concerning a commission of inquiry to examine U.S. detention policies and practices after September 11, 2001.
► And CILC's already partnered with the the 40-year-old, Washington, D.C.-based Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights, to help drafting a framework for peace and reconciliation in Darfur. More later on this Darfur Project, to which a host of guest lecturers also are contributing teir time and expertise.
Wish us well as we endeavor to meet the challenge posed by Dr. King.

(A grateful hat tip to Legal History Blog for posting on our new Center)

Sahrawi activist to receive RFK rights award

Soon to receive the 2008 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award is Aminatou Haidar (right), for the last 2 decades a campaigner for the self-determination of the people of her native Western Sahara. (photo credit)
Haidar's homeland, once a Spanish colony, has been under Morocco's military control since 1975. That same year that an International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion rejected Moroccan claims to sovereignty. Soon the independence Frente Polisario proclaimed a government in exile for the region. The United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) has operated there since a ceasefire was signed in 1991. The planned referendum has yet to be held. (A new article on this matter is hot off the presses: Erika Conti, The Referendum for Self-Determination: Is it still a solution? The never-ending dispute over Western Sahara, 16 African Journal of International & Comparative Law 178 (2008).)
Because of her own efforts on behalf of self-determination Haidar has spent years behind bars:

In 1987, at the age of 21, Ms. Haidar was one of 700 peaceful protestors arrested for participating in a rally in support of a referendum. Later she was 'disappeared' without charge or trial and held in secret detention centers for four years, where she and 17 other Sahrawi women were tortured. In 2005, the Moroccan police detained and beat her after another peaceful demonstration. She was released after 7 months, thanks to international pressure from groups like Amnesty International and European Parliament.

Notwithstanding, Haidar continues to work for nonviolent settlement of the dispute, an approach for which she's known as the "Sahrawi Gandhi."
Haidar will receive a prize of $30,000 at a November ceremony in Washington. That is "the beginning of the RFK Center's long-term partnership with Ms. Haidar and our commitment to work closely with her to realize the right to self-determination for the Sahrawi people," said Monika Kalra Varma (left), Director of the RFK Memorial Center for Human Rights (and, I'm proud to say, a former student of mine). The 1st such award was given in 1984, since then, 38 human rights defenders, from 22 countries, have been honored.