Human Rights Day Symposium Highlights Advocacy and Research
On Tuesday, December 9, 2025, the Human Rights Program (HRP) and the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (CHGS) hosted their second annual Human Rights Day Symposium. The symposium honors Human Rights Day, which is annually observed on December 10 to commemorate the day in 1948 when the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. On December 9, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly approved the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
The symposium kicked off with a poster session where 34 undergraduate, masters, and PhD students presented their posters on human rights issues. Topics spanned from anti-NGO legislation, to climate-induced migration, the effects of mass atrocities on women, Muslim identity in America and Europe, and much more. “I was initially nervous, but it became clear that the true value of the symposium came from all the genuine conversations and collective pursuit of human dignity,” reflected undergraduate presenter Sanket Deshpande. Thanks to a generous grant from The Ohanessian Endowment Fund for Justice and Peace Studies of the Minneapolis Foundation, HRP and CHGS were thrilled to give out $6,000 in awards to deserving students for their outstanding research and contributions to the poster session.
After the poster session, HRP and CHGS were honored to welcome Paul O’Brien, the executive director of Amnesty International USA, as the keynote speaker. Paul’s talk titled, “Human rights activism in a world of growing authoritarian practices,” was an inspirational and informative discussion of how human rights defenders can adapt to a changing advocacy landscape. “We need to work globally to make anti-rights and authoritarian actions more publicly toxic, costly, and harder to implement,” Paul affirmed. He emphasized the importance of building strong coalitions to defend individuals at risk, and recognized the vital human rights work being done in Minnesota.
The symposium and the awards were made possible through the generous support of The Ohanessian Endowment Fund for Justice and Peace Studies of the Minneapolis Foundation. The Human Rights Program and the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies are grateful to all of the students who presented at the poster session, our dedicated events staff in the Institute for Global Studies, and our human rights community.
Congratulations to Our Student Award Winners
Undergraduate Student Awards
First Place (Tie): Mumtaaz Mahammud Hirsi, “Silent Scars: The Psychological and Physical Effects of Mass Atrocities on Women”
First Place (Tie): Ayan Mohamed, “Muslim Political Participation: An Exploration of Intersecting Identities, Voting Behavior, and Political Power through the lens of SDG 16”
Honorable Mention: Lindsey Streefland, “The Right to a Life Worth Living”
Professional Masters Student Awards
First Place: Senghour Sok, “Cyber Scam Compounds as a Human Rights Crisis: Actors, Victims, and Policy Pathways in Cambodia”
Second Place: Alexandra Singer, “Beyond the Cutting Edge: A Multifocal Approach to Human Rights, AI, and Data”
Honorable Mention: Syeda Farhana Haque, “Beyond the Leaves: Power, Rights, and Union Freedom in Bangladesh's Tea Plantations”
PhD Student Awards
First Place: Avantika Singh, “Reconceptualizing Reproductive Harm: A Framework for Contemporary Genocidal Contexts”
Honorable Mention: Lalinne Suon Bell, “Restoring Cultural Memory Through Education: Culturally Restorative Pedagogy-Resistance, Reparation, Reclamation (CRP-RRR)”
