Human Rights Lab Prepares for Geneva Trip

A delegation of University of Minnesota faculty, researchers, students, and alumni will be participating in a variety of research and outreach events at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland during the week of March 2 - 6, 2020. The team's visit coincides with two important sessions of the Human Rights Council and Human Rights Committee.

The week culminates late Friday morning with a public panel discussion on research ethics, co-hosted by the Human Rights Lab and the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights. The aim of this public event is to showcase the unique interdisciplinary research-teaching-outreach approach of the "Minnesota Model" Grand Challenges research project. Lab representatives Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, Barbara Frey, and Amanda Lyons will share lessons learned in research ethics with regard to designing faculty-student-practitioner projects in particularly challenging contexts. They will be joined by Hunter Johnson (Master of Human Rights) and Ana Delgado Hualde (Law) who will share the student perspective of involvement in Lab projects. This Geneva-based session is also a component of the U's Research Ethics Week, an annual week-long series of events highlighting best practices of ethics and integrity in research.

Throughout the week in Geneva, members of the UMN delegation will be working together and separately on a wide range of themes: forced disappearances in Mexico; gun violence; human rights situation of LGBTQ refugees in Kenya; rights of rural communities in Colombia; Counter-terrorism and human rights; corporate accountability for human rights violations; and more. There will be a broad mix of closed and public meetings, and will include UMN Regents Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin reporting to the UN Human Rights Council in her official capacity as UN Special Rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights.