Pursuing Justice: The RWCHR Newsletter

Hello!

As the Centre’s new Director of Communications, I’m delighted to share our most recent newsletter - Pursuing Justice - with you.

In my short time on the team, I’ve witnessed not only bright legal minds in action, but passionate hearts willing to take on some of the biggest human rights issues facing our world - both at the systems level and person by person.

I’m humbled to be in this role, and look forward to showcasing our talented team’s vision, leadership, and results with you.

The convergence of a global rise in authoritarianism and climate and ecological breakdown mean that what we do now - and what (and who!) we choose to stand for - has the potential to affect the course of history. 

As a partner, supporter, or friend of the Centre, thank you for standing with us as we advocate for justice, freedom, and democracy.

This issue holds some special updates, including an invitation to meet the man who issued Vladimir Putin’s arrest warrant and a teaser from our new podcast, The Price of Conviction.

Happy reading!

Warmly,

Simone
(Pronouns: she/her)

Our Work

ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan to Deliver 2023 Elie Wiesel Distinguished Lectureship in Human Rights

The International Criminal Court (ICC), under the direction of Chief Prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan KC, has just issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for crimes committed against children in Ukraine, as outlined in our landmark report on Russia’s breaches of the Genocide Convention.

By taking this step, the ICC has affirmed that nobody - not even a sitting head of state - is above the law. And, as our Canadian Co-Chair Professor Payam Akhavan (Special Advisor to the Prosecutor of the ICC) said in a recent interview “the arrest warrant is only the beginning.”

We are delighted to invite you to join us in Ottawa in early May for an unforgettable evening with the ICC’s Chief Prosecutor. He will share his vision for the future of global justice under the Rome Statute, and will invite us to consider the opportunity that this painful moment in our collective experience offers: an opportunity to create a more just world for all, anchored in the rule of law.

The RWCHR’s Elie Wiesel Lectureship in Human Rights convenes leading members of bench, bar, and academe — along with parliamentarians, students, media, and civil society representatives to learn from and engage with a distinguished lecturer and role model in the pursuit of justice. Anchored in the horrors of the Holocaust and its lessons for humanity, the pursuit of international justice and accountability for the world’s worst crimes are at the heart of the Lectureship, just as they were central to the life of its namesake, our distinguished co-founder, Professor Elie Wiesel.

We are delighted to co-host this event in partnership with the University of Ottawa's Faculty of Law and its Human Rights Research and Education Centre.

Registration will open soon, so please stay tuned for your invitation!

Podcast: The Price of Conviction

Our podcast will be launching soon!

The Price of Conviction takes you behind prison bars to hear the stories of some of the world’s most courageous individuals: political prisoners who are risking it all for freedom, justice, and our shared future.

It is more than a podcast.

It is a platform for international action and solidarity.

Listen to the trailer now.

Learn more here.

 

Sign up here to be among the first to know when we launch.

DEFENDING POLITICAL PRISONERS

We defend political prisoners, wherever they are. We provide legal counsel and advocate for their release. Each prisoner’s case is about their individual rights as well as about the just causes for which they stand, and for which they have been incarcerated - often in illegal and inhumane conditions, and often for decades.

Raoul Wallenberg, hero of the Holocaust and political prisoner of the Soviet Union until his death, taught us that one person with the compassion to care and the courage to act can transform history. We aim to keep political prisoners - each one an agent of change - in the public conscience until they are free.

One Year of Detention: International Advocacy for Vladimir Kara-Murza

Vladimir Kara-Murza, Russian opposition leader and political prisoner (and RWCHR Senior Fellow) has now been behind bars for a year.

In support of his case, we are co-organizing A Year of Injustice: The One-year Anniversary of Vladimir Kara-Murza’s Wrongful, Unlawful, and Arbitrary Detention - a high profile event in Washington, D.C., alongside other pro-democracy groups.

We have just submitted a joint letter to United States Secretary of State Antony Blinkenasking that he be declared unlawfully or wrongfully detained and that responsibility for his case be transferred to the U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs. The letter is co-signed with Vladimir’s wife, Evgenia Kara-Murza, the McCain Institute, Free Russia Foundation, Human Rights First, and the Human Rights Foundation.

We have also supported a major joint international statement calling on the Russian government and Vladimir Putin to release Kara-Murza and acquit him of all charges. Signatories include a coalition of scholars, advocates, and officials from Forum 2000, Freedom House, Women’s Peace Network, Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, International Partnership for Human Rights, National Endowment for Democracy, World Uyghur Congress, Human Rights Foundation, and the European Parliament, among others.

“The only court that matters is the court of global public opinion… The best hope, the best defence, for political prisoners in our country is international attention.” – Vladimir Kara-Murza in 2019 (prior to his arrest in 2022)

Huseyin Celil’s Birthday Behind Bars

This month, Uyghur-Canadian citizen Huseyin Celil turned 54 years old in a Chinese prison. He has been illegally detained since 2006 after speaking up for Uyghur Rights, and has spent much of these past 17 years in solitary confinement.

Let’s not let this Canadian citizen spend another birthday behind bars!

Alexey Pichugin Marks 18 Years Behind Bars

Alexey Pichugin (Russian federation) was arrested on March 30, 2005, and has now spent 18 years behind bars for his refusal to bear false witness. He is being held incommunicado at the notorious Lefortovo prison. Alexey holds the awful distinction of being the longest serving political prisoner in Putin’s Russia.

Learn their names. Be their voice. Share their stories, and don’t let the international community forget them!

RAISI’S IRAN

Human rights abuses in Iran have been a long-standing priority for the Centre, and we proudly stand with the Iranian people during these especially potent and perilous times.

Celebrating Iran’s Expulsion from the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women

This March, we partnered with UN Watch to host a celebration in New York of the successful campaign to expel Iran from the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.

Electing Iran - a regime that severely restricts women’s freedom and beats, blinds, tortures, and kills women protesters - to protect women’s rights on the global stage was always a terrible idea. We are proud of the role we played in supporting this successful campaign.

“The UN’s unprecedented expulsion of Ayatollah Khamenei’s murderous and misogynistic regime sends the right message. But let us be clear: this is only the beginning. The free world must now move forward to sanction the killers, expel their diplomats, and do everything possible to remove the Ayatollah’s brutal and barbaric regime from Iran.” – Hillel Neuer, UN Watch Director

At the event, we paid tribute to those who contributed to this achievement, and heard from leading voices on how to show solidarity with Iranian women - and all Iranians. These included Canada’s representative to the United Nations (and RWCHR Senior Fellow) Bob Rae, and our friend and collaborator Masih Alinejad, author, journalist and women’s rights activist, who was recently named among TIME’s Women of the Year.

“What happens in the Middle East does not stay in the Middle East… The Islamic republic is more deadly than Coronavirus, and they will infect the rest of the world.” – Masih Alinejad

Our own Director of Policy and Projects, Brandon Silver, used the opportunity to appeal for further concrete action to hold the Iranian regime to account.

“If there's no punishment for the crimes, the crimes will continue – it's time to be proactive, and not reactive”  – Brandon Silver

PUTIN'S RUSSIA

Our team advocates for the rights and freedom of victims of the Kremlin’s human rights violations, both inside and outside Russia.

Russian Breaches of the Genocide Convention

In an interview with TIME magazine, RWCHR Legal Counsel Yonah Diamond argued that the forcible transfer of Ukrainian children by Russian officials amounts to a particularly grave violation of the Genocide Convention.

“Beyond working to stop and prevent continued genocide during the war, states will also be responsible for finding ways to hold Russia accountable for the crimes into the future.” – Yonah Diamond

Yonah also testified this month as part of a briefing at the Italian Senate on Russia’s breaches of the Genocide Convention in Ukraine. The Senate briefing also included Azeem Ibrahim (Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy), Matteo Angioli (Global Committee for the Rule of Law), Professor Vittorio Pagliaro, Sergio Germani (Instituto G. Germani), and Italy’s former Minister of Foreign Affairs Giulio Terzi.
Read our full groundbreaking legal analysis on Russia’s state responsibility for incitement to genocide in its invasion of Ukraine.
 

TARGETED SANCTIONS ADVOCACY

Targeted Sanctions allow democratic nations to respond to human rights abuses and corruption happening anywhere in a way that curtails abusers and corrupt actors while also supporting - both symbolically and materially - victims and survivors.

Our team played a lead role in Canada’s adoption of the Magnitsky law and now advocates for its effective implementation. We also advise other democracies on how to use targeted sanctions to ensure that their countries are no longer safe-havens for perpetrators, and are proud to have become the go-to-organisation for dissidents and human rights defenders around the world seeking to implement sanctions.

Asset Repurposing to Support Ukraine Reconstruction

This March, Irwin Cotler and Brandon Silver led a discussion with the Parliament of Canada’s Social Innovation Caucus on the legal aspects of asset repurposing, and how new laws can be used to help support reconstruction in Ukraine.

Hosted by MP Ryan Turnbull and Senator Ratna Omidvar, their enlightening discussion on seizing and repurposing frozen Russian assets featured leading Canadian and Ukrainian parliamentarians.

Improving the Magnitsky Sanctions Framework

As RWCHR Senior Fellow Suzanne Berger points out in her recent article, this relatively new human rights sanctions regime holds great promise, but still faces many obstacles.

In a recent article for Policy Magazine, Irwin Cotler and Brandon Silver propose ten concrete ways Canada can strengthen its Magnitsky Sanctions framework.

“Canada can be a global leader in protecting dignity and democracy by strengthening the use of targeted sanctions. These ten recommendations provide a pathway. In acting upon them, Canada can rise to the occasion at a moment in history that so urgently needs it. The safeguarding of peace, order and good government at home and internationally demands no less.”
- Irwin Cotler and Brandon Silver

COMBATTING ANTISEMETISM, GENOCIDE, AND ALL FORMS OF HATE

Never again. Not for Jews, and not for anyone.

Making Justice Trustworthy

In my previous 2 posts, I talked about the new Internet and how some artists who are entrenched in poverty can use the rule of law to restructure and shape a better society for all of us. Just how are they doing it?

Artists from conflict zones or who are stateless refugees have been given the first opportunity to access InternetBar Institute (IBO)’s online marketplace on the new Internet which makes trustworthy e-commerce accessible to all. IBO has been building an online justice system for over a decade to reach over one billion people across the globe who have no legal proof of their existence. By first organizing peripheralized artists and their fans into electronically linked networks of trust and interaction, cyberspace communities self-organize and learn new ways to communicate and work together.

And, what have these artists and their fans been telling us? They want a marketplace which is fair and just for all. And, they want to be able to tell their stories to a global audience and escape their entrenched poverty without having to resort to traditional justice systems where they will not have to face costs, delays and burdens that are disproportionate to the value they are trying to create and optimize.

To build such a marketplace on the new Internet is not only possible but is also happening now. So how will an online marketplace on a new Internet function globally? To start with, the communities of artists and fans have to trust each other across national boundaries in a global marketplace. So the first step, is for the artists themselves to undertake an obligation to their fans to tell the truth and only sell what they legally are able to. In exchange, their fans will interact with their artists fairly and respect their artists’ creations.

The trustworthy interactions taking place in these first online communities are a starting point for the development of new norms for cyberspace where we can count on being able to access both justice and opportunity. By starting with youth across the globe, we can build a new society based on a rule of law which is fair and justice.

If you want to find out more about IBO’s work, and, be the first to hear the stories, see the art and photography and hear the music of our artists from our current work in Poland, Jordan, Cameroon, The Gambia, Zambia and South Africa, contact jeffaresty@internetbar.org.

Nathaniel Teichman

Nathaniel Teichman is the Director of Sales and Strategic Partnerships at the distributive energy clean technology firm, Voltus. Formerly he was the Head of Strategy & Business Development for Master & Dynamic, a premium audio company, where he leads the company's strategic direction, B2B business, and investor relations. In his time at Master & Dynamic, Nathaniel has led multimillion-dollar partnerships with industry leaders such as Louis Vuitton, Lamborghini, and Nike. Previously, Nathaniel was a management consultant at A.T. Kearney where he specialized in financial modeling and strategic guidance for Fortune 500 companies.

Nathaniel has extensive startup experience. He served as the COO and raised $2 million in funding at Ense, a social audio company from the co-founder of Venmo. Nathaniel also started Stance, an app to ensure citizens' voices could be heard by members of Congress. His activism was widely acknowledged, and recognized by his university. Nathaniel is currently an advisor for Ward's Manufacturing, a new metal fabrication company focused on serving the green energy, agriculture, marine, and manufacturing sectors. Nathaniel also helped Grasshopper Bank, a de novo digital bank built for the business and innovation economy, earn the first new bank charter in New York in over a hundred years. 

Earlier in his career, Nathaniel served as Assistant Vice President at State Street Bank in its Global Markets strategy division helping plan and implement a company-wide transformation. Nathaniel has also held positions at the Center for Sport in Society at Northeastern University, designing and piloting SportsCorps, an AmeriCorps-type program focused on leveraging sport for social good, the United States Army's Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute, helping to create PKSOI's - Stability Operations Lessons Learned & Information Management System (SOLLIMS), and at the Nobel Prize-winning Physicians for Human Rights where he researched human rights violations in Burma against the Rohingya people for use in the International Criminal Court.

Nathaniel holds a B.A. from Tufts University, where he served as co-captain of the fencing team, and an MBA from Columbia Business School, where he played on the school's soccer team. Nathaniel is an avid sports fan - he worked as a vendor at Fenway Park for ten years, has travelled to four World Cups, and plays volleyball every week on the sand courts of New York and Cape Cod

New HRF Podcasts: March Recap

Episode #78 - When Systems Fail: Understanding the Intersection of Authoritarian Regimes & Modern Slavery

This episode, recorded at the 2022 Oslo Freedom Forum (OFF), explores the correlation between the rise in authoritarian regimes and modern slavery. Participants discuss how slavery has been used to maintain power and how affected communities have stood in resistance to change in the future. Panelists include:

Amy Rahe, managing director at the Freedom Fund & anti-trafficking advocate Filmon Debru, Eritrean human trafficking survivor Leonardo Sakamoto, Brazilian journalist & anti-forced labor advocate Jessie Bruner, strategy & program development associate director at the Center for Human Rights & International Justice at Stanford University

Iraklis Gkritsis

Iraklis Gkritsis is a management consultant and entrepreneur. He is currently pursuing an MBA at Columbia Business School with a concentration in finance. Iraklis was a consultant at McKinsey & Company where he worked extensively in banking, energy and public sector projects including helping a European government tackle the economic impact of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to that he worked in the technology sector developing software for European institutions for a major enterprise software company and as a founder of two tech startups in the news aggregation and face animation spaces. 

He studied philosophy at University College London and the University of Warwick in the UK. His master’s thesis focused on the contradictions of the concept of time leveraging the work of Immanuel Kant and John M. E. McTaggart. He has been active in political and debating forums since high school and he represented Greece in the European Youth Parliament. 

Outside his professional and academic pursuits Iraklis is an avid mountaineer, having climbed over fifty mountains in 6 countries over the past decade and an aspiring author having recently completed his first philosophical novel, “The Birth of Man”.

The First Arab-Israeli Rhodes Scholar

Lian Najami is the first Arab-Israeli Rhodes Scholar, an inclusion advocate, and the youngest member on two executive boards of Israeli NGOs: Mabat and 50:50 Startups. Fluent in five languages, she was featured at the 2016 Forbes 30 under 30 summit in Israel for her leadership role within the Arab community and served in the US Senate as a Lantos Congressional Fellow in 2017.

A Zoom link will be sent to those who register here: https://guestli.st/743826

 

The session will also be live-streamed on our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/Hillel.Harvard.

Harvard Hillel would like to acknowledge the generosity of the Brachman Family of Columbus Ohio in sponsoring this event. We are grateful to Merom '58, Judith '60, Lavea '84, Sarai '86, and Shael '90.

Zaki Raheem

Zaki Raheem is a Director at DAI’s Sustainable Business Group. He is an enterprise development and entrepreneurship professional with 20 years of project design, research, training, mentoring, and advisory experience. He has engaged in extensive short-term consulting and long-term field work with MSMEs, startups and corporates throughout Asia (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Myanmar, Oman, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Timor-Leste, Uzbekistan), Africa (Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Somalia / Somaliland, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe), Latin America (Guatemala, Guyana, Nicaragua, Panama and Trinidad & Tobago), and North America (TechStars Accelerator in Washington DC, accelerator design and support in Mexico City, Permian Basin, and Alberta & British Columbia).

He is presently serving as a Technical Director for global SME & entrepreneurship initiatives with Mastercard’s Center for Inclusive Growth (USA) and IKEA Foundation (East Africa). He supports the design, training curriculum development, mentorship, and impact investor engagement with a network of incubators, accelerators with a focus on agribusiness, climate innovation and local content.  He has led market studies and value chain assessments in over 20 countries in the agribusiness, energy, manufacturing, financial services, and tourism sectors that have informed donor-funded MSME project designs with USAID, DFID, World Bank, and IFC. Before joining DAI, he engaged in related enterprise development activities with Earth Institute’s Millennium Cities Initiative, Chemonics, IRC, FINCA, AED, UNIDO, Plan International, CARE, Education Development Center, Practical Action, EcoVentures International (EVI), UN-Habitat, and Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) ESG advisory team.

He is an Adjunct Professor for Columbia University’s School of International & Public Affairs (SIPA) teaching a graduate-level Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME) Development class. He serves as a mentor for entrepreneurs at the Kosmos Innovation Center in Ghana, the Guyana Accelerate-HER program and the #StartupColumbia social entrepreneurship competition; and as a technical lead for DAI’s engagement with the Global Accelerator Network (GAN) and Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE).

 

Zaki was one of the most humanistic and formidable independent thinkers, I was privileged to work with. His initiative and boldness, together with a co-leader Jeannette Bailey, created what became a powerful Institute program,  BUILD. Their leadership skills and ability to navigate complex bureaucracies, with the University, and beyond, in the countries they successfully sought to serve, was impressive and inspired successive generations of my students. . 

Andrea Bartoli

Dr. Andrea Bartoli is the President of the Sant’Egidio Foundation for Peace and Dialogue. He works primarily on peacemaking and genocide prevention.  

Andrea is a member of the Steering Group of the Global Action Against Mass Atrocity Crimes (GAAMAC), a fellow at the Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict and Complexity AC4 at Columbia University, a Senior Fellow at the Center for Peacemaking Practice (CPP) at the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, and an active member of the Insights Conflict resolution community (ICI).

Andrea has been a member of the Community of Sant’Egidio since 1970. He was its Representative to the UN and the USG (1992-2018). He was the Convener of the Genocide Prevention Advisory Network (GPANet); the Dean of the School of Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University and of the School of Diplomacy at Seton Hall University. He was also the Founding Director of the Center for International Conflict Resolution at Columbia University.

Andrea is also a premier teacher who has taught courses on conflict prevention, genocide prevention, peacemaking, Christianity and peace, United Nations, and Insight approach to conflict resolution.  

He has been involved in many successful diplomatic activities and peacemaking processes including in Mozambique (1990–1992), Guatemala (1995), Algeria (1995), Kosovo (1998), Burundi (1999-2000), Democratic Republic of the Congo (1996-current) Casamance (1994- current), Central African Republic (2015 – current), South Sudan (2017 – current) . 

He oversaw the development and implementation of CICR, S-CAR and School of Diplomacy's interventions in Burma/Myanmar, East Timor, Colombia, Iraq and the African Great Lakes Region, Basque Country and with the Global Actin Against Mass Atrocity Crimes. Andrea has worked for and collaborated with both public- and private-sector partners such as the United Nations, the World Bank, the Global Coalition to Prevent Armed Conflicts, the Ford Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, the European Union, Parliamentarians for Global Action as well as for the governments of Norway, East Timor, Portugal, Sweden, Poland and Switzerland.

I have been inspired by St. Egidio's work, whether in confronting global conflict, aiding abandoned migrants, people suffering from AIDS , refugees seeking asylum, the often-marginalized impoverished, shunned, powerless. Their ecumenicism, unique healing spirit, and their capacity to bridge divides in a highly eclectic and innovative manner is impressive.  Andrea's passion for humanity dignifies the world we occupy. I had the privilege of Andrea's engagement with my Institute's colloquium students' efforts to understand religion's role in society and politics, and had the honor of presenting him with my Institute's Dr. Jean Mayer Award for Global Citizenship.

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The VII Foundation newsletter (Frontline Report March)

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Alona says goodbye to her husband Nikoli as she flees westward in Ukraine with her child on March 7, 2022. Photo by Ron Haviv / VII.



The challenge of living in a world where beliefs and actions are increasingly out-of-sync with facts and realities is never ending. The VII Foundation’s mission is to harness the power of first-person visual journalism to expose these truths by putting the story into the hands of people living with those realities.


Dear Friends,


After photographing war, injustice, and inhumanity of many kinds for two decades, I thought there were few acts of atrocity beyond my imagination. I was wrong; I could not imagine Ukraine. 

In January, in our first report, I wrote that "when we turn on our screens and look at our news feeds, we witness politicians of every stripe constantly changing facts, politicizing information, and undermining our fragile societies." Even that seems understated now. For all of us, Russia's invasion of Ukraine has underlined the fragility of the universal desire for peace and a life without fear and the vulnerability every one of us faces when confronted by avarice, criminality, and unconstrained brutality and ambition.

War blinds peace, but when we are breaking frozen ground to bury children in mass graves, the urgency to summon the courage to find a path to peace could not be more profound. The VII Foundation's signature project, Imagine: Reflections on Peace, examines the realities of how post-conflict societies emerge from war and explores how to make better and more resilient peace agreements. It is exhibiting at two significant locations this spring. First, it opens at the National Museum of Bosnia in Sarajevo in April. This symbolic museum is situated on what we used to know as 'Sniper Alley' and was on the frontline during the siege of Sarajevo. Then, in June, we open the exhibition at the United States Institute for Peace in Washington DC, established by the US Congress in 1984 as an independent institution devoted to the nonviolent prevention and mitigation of deadly conflict abroad.

The necessity of trustworthy journalism and evidence-based reporting to free societies and democratic culture could not be more apparent. And the need to support the men and women who readily put themselves at risk to bring us the horrific stories that document war has rarely been more compelling. 

Our sister organization VII Agency has eight photographers working in Ukraine and Poland, providing essential coverage. Ali Arkady, Eric Bouvet, Ron Haviv, Joachim Ladefoged, Maciek Nabrdalik, Ilvy Njiokiktjien, Espen Rasmussen, and John Stanmeyer have all been working in Kyiv, Lviv, and on the Polish border. VII Insider's online community hosts special audio dispatches from Kyiv by Eric Bouvet and Ron Haviv, and Ilvy Njiokiktjien in Lviv, sharing how they work in an active war zone. In solidarity with our Ukrainian colleagues, The VII Foundation supports hazardous environment training for Ukrainian journalists.

The VII Academy in Sarajevo has trained refugees and migrants in Bosnia to tell their own stories for the last year. "Dispatches in Exile" is the product of a partnership with the International Organization for Migration, and a selection of the stories was recently published in the Bosnian daily newspaper Oslobodenje. We hope that "Dispatches in Exile" will be replicated for other refugee populations, including those forced to leave Ukraine. In the meantime, VII Academy alumni have been photographing Ukrainians who have had to flee and seek sanctuary in Moldova and Romania. 

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization, reminded us this week that even amid the war in Ukraine, "nowhere on earth are people more at risk than Tigray." John Edwin Mason will address Tigray's media coverage in an upcoming essay on VII Insider's blog. For those of us who seek a more inclusive, evidence-based picture of the world, the VII Foundation is the non-profit media education organization transforming visual journalism by giving local voices the power to have a real impact on global events. We continue to pursue our global mission by launching our first Level 1 Photojournalism and Documentary Photography Seminar for English speakers in Sub-Saharan Africa. 
 
If you would like to support the programs and initiatives of the VII Academy or The VII Foundation, or if you would like to partner with us or join one of our programs, please don't hesitate to contact us. 

I join you all in looking forward to better times, 

Gary Knight
CEO
The VII Foundation

Irpin Bridge, Ukraine, March 8, 2022. Civilians, including patients from a hospice for the elderly, attempt to flee the fighting in the city of Irpin, Ukraine. Photo by Eric Bouvet / VII.

Projects

Hazardous environment training is essential for managing the risk to visual journalists working in conflict zones. The VII Foundation has been working with Silk Road Training to provide a safety, security and first aid learning experience that can help raise global safety standards as well as develop the skills of everyone living and working in hostile environments. This training is now being provided to VII Academy’s 13 mentees and 14 fellows, as well as journalists and producers from Ukraine currently operating in the current war.

Dispatches in Exile

VII Academy in Sarajevo has for the last year trained refugees and migrants in Bosnia to tell their stories of the journey to sanctuary. These stories have then been published on Dispatches in Exile, a media portal produced in partnership with the International Organisation for Migration that showcases these first-person accounts. A selection of the stories was recently published in the Bosnian newspaper Oslobodenje in an eight page insert (cover image above), edited by some of the participants in collaboration with staff from Oslobodenje and VII Academy. The VII Foundation is now in discussions to see how Dispatches in Exile can train refugees and migrants who have fled other conflicts around the world.

Alumni work on the border with Ukraine

According to the UNHCR, nearly 3.5 million Ukrainians have (at the time of writing) been forced to flee the war. Poland has taken in more than 2 million refugees, and Romania is the second most significant destination, with more than 500,000 people having crossed the border. VII Academy alumni Vladimir Zivojinovic, Ioana Moldovan, Andrei Pungovschi, and Alexandra Radu have been photographing on the border between Ukraine and Romania, and their work has been featured on the VII Academy Instagram feed. According to Ioana, “The border crossing in Siret has never been so crowded. Thousands of Ukrainians, relocating to what they believe is a safer place, are crossing into Romania. The waiting line on the Ukrainian side stretches for kilometers. Teenagers, mothers with small babies, grandparents accompanying their grandkids, are pushing or carrying the little they managed to pack in their escape from war."

Some customers comply with the COVID-19 protective measures enacted by the Congolese state, while others seem to live their lives normally without even wearing a mask, which is compulsory during this period of containment following the declaration of the state of emergency for DR Congo. Ngaliema, Kinshasa, DR Congo, 29 April 2020. ©Justin Makangara for VII Academy.

New course for African photographers

VII Academy is launching its first Level 1 Photojournalism and Documentary Photography Seminar for English speakers in Sub-Saharan Africa. VII Academy will offer scholarships to 10 photographers who are citizens and residents of the following countries: Angola, Botswana, the Comoros, Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The course is led by South African picture editor, photojournalist and educator Paul Botes and will begin on 22 April. The participants will explore how to develop a lasting career in visual storytelling, including conceiving, researching and planning story ideas. The deadline for application is March 30 at 2359 EDT.

VII Insider’s online community continues to provide an open platform for public debate and discussion, including on the war in Ukraine. On the VII Insider blog, you will find special audio dispatches from Eric Bouvet and Ron Haviv in Kyiv, and Ilvy Njiokiktjien in Lviv, detailing how they are working daily in order to make their photographs. In addition, VII Insider has hosted a debate about ethics in a time of war, and published on its blog the first video - looking at Ron Haviv's coverage of the Irpin evacuation and Ukrainian resistance - from a new partnership with the visual culture and media literacy foundation Reading The Pictures. 

Members of the VII Insider community get access to weekly live presentations, and can view the video collection, which contains nearly 100 recordings of educational discussions. Check out the upcoming events and new writing and video presentations on the VII Insider blog.

VII Insider is a program of The VII Foundation in partnership with PhotoWings and VII Agency.

Joe Koops

I am currently Chair and Professor of Security Studies  and Director of the Institute for Security and Global Affairs (ISGA) at Leiden University (Campus Den Haag), The Netherlands. In addition, I also serve on the board of the Global Governance Institute (GGI) in Brussels. My passion lies at the intersection of teaching, scholarly research and policy-oriented think tank advice as well as academic management and educational reform. 

I am particularly interested in the changing nature of security and global affairs as well as the role of regional and global organisations in the field of global governance, particularly (but not exclusively) in the field of peace & security. My recent publications in this field include European Approaches to United Nations Peacekeeping: Towards a Stronger Re-engagement? (co-edited with Giulia Tercovich, Routledge, 2018) the Oxford Handbook of United Nations Peacekeeping Operations (co-edited with Norrie MacQueen, Thierry Tardy and Paul D. Williams, Oxford University Press, 2015), The Responsibility to Protect and the Third Pillar: Legitimacy and Operationalization (co-edited with Daniel Fiott, Palgrave MacMillan, 2015), The European Union as a Diplomatic Actor (co-edited with Gjovalin Macaj, Palgrave MacMillan, 2015) and the Palgrave Handbook of Inter-Organisational Relations in World Politics (co-edited with Rafael Biermann, Palgrave, 2017).

In the area of policy-oriented research and advice, I served as Lessons Learned Advisor of the Standby High Readiness Brigade for UN Operations (SHIRBRIG) in 2009, Advisor to the Head of the Partnership Unit of the Department of Policy, Evaluation and Training of the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations in New York (2012) and the Head of the UN Liaison Office for Peace and Security (UNLOPS) in Brussels (2012). At the European level, I have been an expert on the European Commission's Ethics Review Committee as well as an appointed expert for the Dual Use Expert Group. I also frequently advise the European Parliament (on the Responsibility to Protect, Comprehensive Approach to Security Sector Reform, EU-UN cooperation in peacekeeping and EU-IMF relations in Global Economic Governance).  

Before my appointment at Leiden, from 2014 - 2018, I was Dean of Vesalius College, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and Research Professor for European Foreign & Security Policy at the VUB's Institute for European Studies (IES). At Vesalius College, I led the full academic turnaround and NVAO reaccreditation process and reformed with an excellent team of colleagues the College into an interdisciplinary College of Global Affairs. I devised and taught the award-winning International Affairs Capstone / Senior Seminar Course ("From Theory to Policy-Oriented Advice") and devised and directed the Executive Course in Global Risk Analysis and Crisis Management (GRACM). Before my appointment as Dean, I used to teach courses at the intersection of European, International and global affairs (Introduction to International Relations, The United Nations and Global Governance, the EU's Common Security and Defence Policy in Theory and Practice, International Organisations and Global Governance and Introduction to European Peace & Security Studies).

I first met Joe when I attended the annual international Council for European Studies gathering at Science Po in Paris in 2014 where he chaired a panel on peacekeeping.  

Impressed, I subsequently invited him to participate in EPIIC’s  2016 Future of Europe symposium and Pugwash inspired professional workshop on the future of European security. 

Passionate about the educational reform of higher education, he was impressed by EPIIC and Institute’s pedagogy and invited me to lecture at Vesalius College in Brussels, and to meet his Deans and faculty to discuss the creation of a new cross-Atlantic academic and policy entity he wanted me to lead VITAL – The Vesalius Institute for Trans-Atlantic Security in collaboration with NATO and the EU. 

Plans were discarded as Joe left Vesalius College to assume his new responsibilities at the University of Leiden. He recently reached out again to resume our relationship with Leiden and the Global Governance Institute which intrigues me once again, as much for renewing with Joe, who I admire and care about, as the content.

Carey Goldberg

Carey Goldberg is a longtime journalist for top media outlets from The New York Times to Bloomberg News, with a particular focus on science, health and medical stories. She ratcheted back her career for many years while her children were young, and is also happy to talk about work-life balance issues. (They feature in the triple memoir she co-authored, “Three Wishes: A True Story of Good Friends, Crushing Heartbreak and Astonishing Luck On Our Way To Love and Motherhood,” published by Little, Brown.)  

Carey is fluent in Russian and became a Moscow correspondent for the AP and the Los Angeles Times just in time for the collapse of the Soviet Union and the stormy period of nation-building that followed. She came home to work for The New York Times, ending up as Boston bureau chief. She then spent a year at the MIT Knight Science Journalism Fellowship to transition to science journalism, and from 2002 on covered health and science for The Boston Globe and WBUR. In early 2021, she joined Bloomberg News as its Boston bureau chief, but left in late 2022 to focus only on science and medical stories that struck her as most meaningful to tell. She has also been co-authoring a book on the new ChatGPT-type of AI and what it will mean for medicine. 

Carey graduated summa cum laude from Yale a very long time ago, and went to grad school in Soviet Studies at Harvard but never got her master’s because once she finally got a visa to get in to Russia at a time of momentous change, she couldn’t see going back to academia. Her trajectory exemplifies a dramatic mid-career shift: She had dreamed since high school of being a Moscow correspondent, but when that dream had been realized by her mid-thirties, she decided that the most important news in the world was scientific progress, and that was what she wanted to cover. She has no regrets, though she has yet to feel like she’s really mastered the craft of science narrative. She can offer guidance on: Text and audio journalism, science communications, health-care communications, work-life issues.     

 

Carey is one of the more brilliant, idealistic, and dynamic people that I am privileged to call a friend. She entered my world years ago through Iris when Iris was Director of WBUR's Innovation Lab, and has been an effervescent, thoughtful influence in our lives. Her concerns are never petty, they are always ethical and marked by independent thinking. One of her recent articles is: Eric Lander is getting uncanceled. 

Meet HRF Freedom Fellow Pema Doma

Human Rights Foundation (HRF) Freedom Fellow Pema Doma is a Tibetan human rights and climate campaigner who was a key organizer in #NoBeijing2022, a global campaign against China’s hosting of the Winter Olympic Games. She has trained thousands of youth activists in community organizing and serves as the executive director for Students for a Free Tibet, a global grassroots network working for Tibetan rights.

Doma is currently part of the HRF’s Freedom Fellowship, a one-year program that provides hands-on, expert mentorship across seven critical areas: leadership, movement-building, organizing, fundraising, media, mental health, and digital security. 

HRF sat down with Doma to learn more about China’s expanding surveillance state and her efforts to raise awareness about the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s tactics of biometric repression.

Phil Torres

Phil was born to Chilean parents living overseas from their homeland during the revolution only to find himself fleeing his home in Nicaragua as a child. His family's experiences have always been a driving force to better understand why some countries (de)evolve.

Phil left EPIIC ('93 & '94) and Tufts ('94) and spent four years operating in various developing markets on USAID and IMF economic development projects. After helping to design the stock market in Uganda and the pension in Kazakhstan he became increasingly interested in the intersection of markets and eco-political development. After a graduate degree from the University of Chicago ('01) he became a "global macro" investor specializing in the emerging markets. Over the course of his twenty five year investment career Phil has launched a hedge fund, a mutual fund, managed sovereign wealth, and retirement savings. Lately he has returned to his roots and is focusing on human welfare oriented impact investing in the emerging markets.

Away from his time in markets, Phil has held a diverse if not comical collection of jobs: a shrimp trader, a t-shirt broker, an internet radio entrepreneur, a yacht cleaner, a Hobie cat instructor, and an aloe juice salesman. Phil is the Senior Portfolio Manager of Emerging Markets for Aegon Asset Management and an Adjunct Professor of Finance at Loyola University of Chicago. He is also one of the original Superforecasters from the 2013 ACE IARPA research project. Among things Phil is most proud of are his two brilliant children and his overstamped passports.

Phil was lucky enough to participate in two rounds of EPIIC where he was mentored and educated by Sherman. He credits Sherman with learning to learn and understanding that big questions are knowable (if you don't sleep for a semester). Phil is still in awe of the love and passion Sherman resonates to pull students of all ages into his orbit.

The Children of Ukraine Educational Center fundraiser for 2022

The Children of Ukraine Educational Center fundraiser for 2022 is an initiative of the InternetBar.org Institute (IBO), a trusted 501(c)(3) registered US nonprofit. Your donation will be tax deductible. All funds raised will be used to support Bee1World's goal to provide lunches every day while the students are in school as a first step toward helping them regain their human dignity.

Gary Knight

Gary is an award-winning photographer and a co-founder and director of the VII Photo Agency. He is also the co-director of the VII Foundation and director and founder of the VII Academy. Gary is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Frontline Club, London; co-founder of The GroundTruth Project, Boston; founding director of the Program for Narrative & Documentary Practice at the Institute for Global Leadership at Tufts University; twice chair and president of the World Press Photo Award; was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 2009; and a Logan Non Fiction Fellow at the Carey Institute in 2017.   

 

Gary has worked as a photographer all over the world since the late 1980’s, early in his career in conflict photography, and more recently with an increased focus on anthropology and socioeconomics. 

In January 1993, he moved to the former Yugoslavia where he became involved in documenting war crimes and crimes against humanity during the civil war. During this period, he covered conflicts in Africa, the Middle East and the Balkans and worked widely in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, South Asia, and the Far East (including North Korea) concentrating on human rights, poverty-based issues, and current affairs stories for US and European media.   

  

From 1999 to 2009 he was a contract photographer for Newsweek Magazine. He has worked on assignments for Time, The Sunday Times, The New York Times, Paris Match, and Stern and his work has been published by magazines and newspapers worldwide. His work has also been exhibited worldwide and is in the collections of several museums and private collectors.  

  

In 2000 with John Stanmeyer he conceived the VII Photo Agency which launched in 2001. VII was named as the third most influential entity in photography[ by American Photo Magazine in 2003. In the same year he founded with Ron Haviv, a Convisero mentor, The VII Foundation.   

  

In 2005 Knight conceived the idea for the Angkor Photo Festival and Angkor Photo Workshops to support emerging photographers from Asia while he was teaching a workshop with other VII photographers, James Nachtwey, Alexandra Boulat and Antonin Kratochvil in Siem Reap. In 2008 he founded with Simba Gill and Convisero mentor Mort Rosenblum, the print periodical Dispatches.   

  

In 2010 he founded and was the Director of the Program for Narrative & Documentary Practice at the Institute for Global Leadership until he resigned in 2018 to create and develop the VII Academy. The VII Academy is a non-profit institution which provides tuition-free education in media practice to the majority world and underrepresented communities in G20 countries from its campuses in Arles, France and Sarajevo, Bosnia. He was named a Logan Non-Fiction Fellow at the Carey Institute in 2017.  

  

Knight was twice chairman of the World Press Photo contest in 2008 and 2014. He was vice president of the Pierre and Alexandra Boulat Foundation; was Chairman of the WHO/Stop TB Photography Advisory Board between 2009 and 2011, a board member of the Crimes of War Foundation and a trustee of the Indochina Media Memorial Foundation.   

  

He is a member of the board of the Frontline Club, London, is a co-founder and was a member of the board of the GroundTruth Foundation.  

  

Among his awards;   

1996: The Amnesty International Photojournalism Award 1996/7 : Civil War In Zaire  

2002: Amnesty International UK Media Award, photojournalism category, for his work on War crimes in Kosovo for Newsweek International.[5]  

2003: Honorable Mention Robert Capa Award: The War in Iraq.  

2003: Fuji France Photographer of the Year 2003/4: The War in Iraq

I first met Gary in 2010 when he was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard. I invited him to lecture and exhibit for the Institute on his powerful work, Evidence. Together we created this exhibition, Questions Without Answers. 

  

Gary immediately struck me as a caring, superb instructor. I recruited him as an advisor for our new Exposure photojournalism program (my first effort at supporting a photojournalism program at Tufts, which previously did not have a formal journalism program), and named him as an INSPIRE Scholar at the Institute.

 

He joined forces with another Convisero mentor, Mort Rosenblum to prepare and accompany our Exposure students on narrative documentary immersions in Argentina, Cambodia, India, Kashmir, Uganda, and the US. 

   

Gary understood and appreciated the foundation and passion of our students who had created with Exposure, an initiative strongly endorsed and supported by his colleague James Nachtwey.  Exposure was proud to host the inaugural VII gathering of all its photographers. 

At my invitation, Gary developed and taught Exposure’s successor program, the Institute’s  Program on Narrative and Documentary Practice. Gary’s impact as a dedicated mentor was immediate. His students admired  his intellect, his directness, and professionalism. They appreciated his great sensitivity and cultural awareness.  

 

Significant beloved alumni of these programs include Sarah Arkin, Jessica Bidgood, Rachel Boillot, Matt Edmundson, Christina Goldblum, Hadley Green, Elizabeth Herman, Sam James, Austin Siadek, and Nichole Sobecki. 

 

At Gary’s invitation I have joined VII Photo Foundation and its Academy.  Our first collective effort yielded Imagine:Reflections on Peace. (2020)  

  

I have had the distinct pleasure of working with Gary for decades.Details on our close collaboration over the years can be found here.  

  

Now, in 2023, we are creating a proposal for Sai University in Chennai, for a collaboration with Convisero’s Shahidul Alam and his DRIK studio and for a South Asian workshop. It is based on our experience with PDNP and hope it will lay the foundation for a larger regional program based in India.


VII's Arles Exhibition Opening

With the support of Jennifer Stengaard Gross and Peter Stengaard, and the William, Jeff, and Jennifer Gross Foundation, VII Academy has opened a new facility for advanced media education, exhibition, and discourse in Arles, France.

Named The Alexandra Boulat Campus in honor of the late Alexandra Boulat, one of the founding photographers of VII Photo Agency, the facility is housed in a former salt warehouse on the banks of the Rhone River at the mouth of the Camargue delta. This building will join the VII Academy space in Sarajevo, Bosnia Herzegovina, to offer advanced level tuition-free training in visual journalism to men and women from the majority world and other under-represented communities from G20 countries. With this presence in Arles — a UNESCO World Heritage site and the former provincial capital of Rome — VII Academy will be close to the world’s leading festival of photography, Les Rencontres de la Photographie, as well as the French National School of Photography and the Luma Foundation.