NEWS RELEASE
February 26, 2007
Thomas Jefferson School of Law Presents:
Challenges for Children’s Rights Symposium
Will Examine the Worldwide Plight of Children
SAN DIEGO -- The Center for Global Legal Studies at Thomas Jefferson School of Law is sponsoring a symposium titled “Challenges for Children’s Rights” on March 2, 2007, from 11:15 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. The public is invited to attend.
The symposium aims to examine some of the most difficult situations confronting children around the world and the children’s rights issues that arise in these contexts. Using a thematic approach, conference will offer a look at a range of issues having a dramatic impact on children’s rights and welfare, including trafficking, armed conflict, migration, juvenile justice, HIV/AIDS, assisted reproduction, sorcery, and infant surgery.
Challenges for Children’s Rights also will explore existing remedies available to children who suffer such human rights abuses as well as alternative approaches for ensuring the rights and well-being of children.
The keynote speaker is Professor Richard H. Weisberg, a Visiting Professor at Thomas Jefferson from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University in New York. Professor Weisberg is the director there of the Program in Holocaust and Human Rights Studies, at Cardozo.
Professor Weisberg’s address is titled: Wronged by Law: Children During the Holocaust.
The program is intended for a wide audience, including academics, practitioners, students, and others interested in issues affecting the rights and welfare of children.
A statement from conference organizer Professor Susan Tiefenbrun:
“Children all over the world are suffering because of the silence of the international community. Children are being enslaved, denied education, sentenced to long prison terms or given the death penalty because they were lured into killing and engaging in other illegal activities that they could not have possibly consented to voluntarily. Huge numbers of children are displaced because of long, ongoing armed conflicts in more than 50 countries of the world. Unprecedented numbers of children are orphaned because of AIDS. Children are placed in intolerable labor conditions that are tantamount to slavery. Children as young as seven are abducted and brainwashed into becoming fearless soldiers. If we are truly committed to our children, we must learn about these invisible children who are suffering. It is a moral outrage that many of us do not even know about the plight of these children, a lost generation, and yet they are the future of our world. This conference will raise the consciousness of our community to these intolerable atrocities that our children must endure so we can take action now and protect our future.”
The Law and Humanities Institute is the co-sponsor of Challenges for Children’s Rights.
For more information, contact Professor Susan Tiefenbrun, Director of the Center for Global Legal Studies at susant@tjsl.edu
The conference is free and registration is required at gnicholas@tjsl.edu or 619 2997-9700 Ext. 1420.
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