5:00-6:30 at the Inter-American Dialogue and online: Art and Politics in Nicaragua: A Conversation with Carlos Fernando Chamorro and Luis Enrique Mejía Godoy (RSVP required).
Wednesday, November 15
8:00-10:00 at atlanticcouncil.org: The Caribbean gender empowerment forum (RSVP required).
A big group of non-governmental human rights organizations, from around Latin America, has a hearing on Thursday at the OAS Inter-American Human Rights Commission to discuss how security forces are misusing supposedly “non-lethal” crowd-control weapons to maim or kill participants in political protests. The United States, through arms sales, is a top source of those weapons.
Join me later on Thursday, at 5:00—at WOLA or online—when I have the honor of moderating a discussion with some of them.
The Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), the Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS), the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations (INCLO) and Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) warmly invite you to the hybrid event “Crowd-control weapons in the Americas: Evidence from the ground and how to stop their harm”. The event will be held in-person and on Zoom on Thursday 9 November from 5:00-6:30 PM EST.
The right to protest in the Americas is regularly undermined when crowd-control weapons (misleadingly called non-lethal or less-lethal) are used and misused in ways that are disproportionate, indiscriminate and illegal. They inflict life-changing injuries, long-term psychological harm and even death. Despite growing recognition of their dangers, the manufacture, marketing, trade and use of law enforcement equipment including less lethal weapons continues to rise.
Join us for a civil society discussion on how to tackle the negative impacts of crowd-control weapons used by law enforcement in protests across the Americas with experts from the US, Argentina, Colombia and Ecuador.
Adam Isaacson, Director for Defense Oversight at WOLA (moderator)
Erika Dailey, Director of Advocacy and Policy of PHR
Alicia Ruth Tapuy Santi, INREDH / Widow of Byron Guatatuca
Camilo Mendoza Zamudio, Researcher for the police violence observatory and platform GRITA of Temblores NGO
Juliana Miranda, Researcher for Citizen Security and Police Violence teams of CELS
Michael Perloff, staff attorney at ACLU
The event will be in Spanish and English with simultaneous interpretation available virtually. For those joining us in person and need interpretation, we ask that you bring a device and headphones to connect to the virtual meeting and access the simultaneous interpretation. Wifi will be available.
There will be ample time for Q&A, as well as a short reception following the discussion with beverages and snacks.
** Registration is required both for in person and virtual participation. Please RSVP through this link.
The event will be livestreamed and accessible afterwards on WOLA’s Youtube Channel.
I’ll be on a first-rate virtual panel on Tuesday afternoon, talking about hard-line “deterrence” border and migration policies—which cause a lot of harm, continue to escalate, and fail to deter desperate people—at the U.S.-Mexico border and along the migration route. Register here to view and participate.
12:15-1:15 at Georgetown University: Latin America Research Seminar – “Almitas milagrosas” in Bolivia: Rites and Objects of Devotion as Portals of Hope for the People (RSVP required).
(Events that I know of, anyway. All times are U.S. Eastern.)
I’ll soon be traveling for work for a couple of weeks. These “events” posts will resume again on November 5.
Tuesday, October 17
2:00-5:00 at the Wilson Center and online: Building a High Quality US-Mexico Pharmaceutical Supply Chain (RSVP required).
5:00 at CINEP Facebook Live: Entre la continuidad y el cambio: creencias y comportamientos sociales que condicionan el derecho a la tierra y el territorio de las mujeres (RSVP required).
7:00-8:30 at IPS and online: The Rising Latin American Left: México and Beyond (RSVP required).
Wednesday, October 18
2:00-3:15 online: Organized crime in Latin America (RSVP required).
3:00-4:00 at Fordham University Zoom: The FERM Program: A Three-Month Assessment Highlighting the Need for a More Family-Centered Approach (RSVP required).
(Events that I know of, anyway. All times are U.S. Eastern.)
Monday, October 9
3:15-8:30 at Inter-American Human Rights Court EventBrite: A 75 años de la Declaración Americana y 45 de la Convención Americana sobre Derechos Humanos: logros y desafíos (RSVP required).
Tuesday, October 10
12:00-1:00 at Washington College of Law: Confronting Authoritarianism in Latin America: A Conversation with leading Human Rights Lawyers in El Salvador (RSVP required).
12:00-1:00 at csis.org: Managing Geopolitical Risk in Mexico’s ICT Sector (RSVP required).
Wednesday, October 11
1:30-2:50 at University of Chicago (hybrid): Journalism Under Threat (RSVP required).
Thursday, October 12
10:00-11:00 at Council of the Americas Zoom: China in the Americas: Assessing the Impact and Implications of Authoritarian Capital (RSVP required).
4:00-5:00 at Georgetown University: The Power of Public Opinion in Latin American Climate Policy (RSVP required).
10:30-11:30 at the Wilson Center and online: Two Years After Moïse Assassination: The Impact of Gang Violence in Haiti (RSVP required).
11:00-12:00 at the Inter-American Dialogue and online: A Conversation with Guyana’s President Irfaan Ali (RSVP required).
4:00-6:00 at CODHES (Bogotá) and online: Balance de Situación Humanitaria en Colombia 2023 (RSVP required).
Thursday, September 14, 2023
10:15 (possibly 2:15) at the Atlantic Council and online: A Conversation with H.E. Irfaan Ali, President of the Co-operative Republic of Guyana (RSVP required).
4:00 at WOLA and WOLA Zoom: Post-election Optics in Guatemala: Judicial Cooptation and Gender Violence (RSVP required).
9:00 at atlanticcouncil.org: Where have the banks gone? Curbing financial de-risking in the Caribbean (RSVP required).
9:30-11:00 at the Wilson Center and online: Journalism in the Age of Spyware: Defending Freedom of the Press and Countering Threats Posed by Surveillance Technologies in Latin America (RSVP required).
10:30 in Room 419, Dirksen Senate Office Building: Hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere, Transnational Crime, Civilian Security, Democracy, Human Rights, and Global Women’s Issues on Fiscal Year 2024 Budget Priorities for the Western Hemisphere.
1:00-3:00 at LAF Berlin online: El regreso de los militares ¿Un peligro para las democracias o más bien un debate fantasma? (RSVP required).
5:00 at Pulitzer Center Zoom: Amazon Underworld: Crime and Corruption in the Shadows of the World’s Largest Rainforest (RSVP required).
Tuesday, August 8, 2023
10:30-11:30 at wilsoncenter.org: Argentina Elige: A Conversation with Martín Redrado, Former Central Bank President and Economic Adviser to Presidential Candidate Horacio Rodríguez Larreta (RSVP required).
2:00-3:00 at wilsoncenter.org: A Conversation with Henrique Capriles, Presidential Candidate for Venezuela’s Primero Justicia Party (RSVP required).
Thursday, August 10, 2023
2:00 at the Atlantic Council and atlanticcouncil.org: A conversation with Alicia Bárcena: Mexico’s newly appointed Secretary of Foreign Affairs (RSVP required).
11:00-12:00 at the Heritage Foundation and online: Catch, Release, and Then What? (RSVP required).
Tuesday, August 1, 2023
12:30-1:30 at wilsoncenter.org: Argentina Elige: A Conversation with Luciano Laspina, Argentine Congressman and Senior Economic Adviser to Presidential Candidate Patricia Bullrich (RSVP required).
6:00-7:00 at thedialogue.org: Elections Series – The Role of the Judiciary in Electoral Contexts: A View from Latin America (RSVP required).
Wednesday, August 2, 2023
12:00-1:30 at wilsoncenter.org: Presentación del reporte del “Foro nacional sobre feminicidio: Visiones y soluciones” y del reporte sobre “Los avances legislativos y propuestas que se encuentran pendientes de aprobar en materia de feminicidio en México” (RSVP required).
2:00-3:00 at wola.org: Abuses at the U.S.- Mexico Border: How To Address Failures and Protect Rights (RSVP required).
Friday, August 4, 2023
10:00-10:45 at csis.org: Looking South: A Conversation with GEN Laura Richardson on Security Challenges in Latin America (RSVP required).
1:15-2:30 at the Inter-American Dialogue and online: A Conversation on Central America (RSVP required).
The Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) and Kino Border Initiative (KBI) cordially invite you to the following webinar:
Abuses at the U.S.- Mexican Border: How To Address Failures and Protect Rights
A U.S.-Mexico border that is well governed can go hand in hand with a border where migrants and asylum seekers receive humane treatment. For this to happen, U.S. government personnel who abuse human rights or violate professional standards must be held to account and victims must receive justice.
Right now, at the U.S.-Mexico border, this rarely happens. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the federal government’s largest civilian law enforcement agency, has a persistent problem of human rights abuse without accountability.
Many, if not most, CBP officers, and agents in CBP’s Border Patrol agency, are professionals who seek to follow best practices. However, the frequency and severity of abuse allegations suggests that agents who do, have little reason to be concerned about consequences from an accountability system that yields few results.
Join us to discuss the launch of our new report, Abuses at the U.S.-Mexican Border: How To Address Failures and Protect Rights. While documenting the problem at the border and showing “failure points” to accountability, the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) and the Kino Border Initiative (KBI) offer more than 40 recommendations for more effective complaints, investigations, discipline, oversight, and cultural change.
The report is a product of years of work documenting human rights violations committed by U.S. federal law enforcement forces at the U.S.-Mexico border. WOLA, based in Washington D.C, maintains a database of over 400 cases—many of them severe—compiled since 2020. KBI has documented thousands of cases of abuse narrated by migrants who have sheltered at its facilities in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. KBI has generated hundreds of formal complaints since 2015 in an effort to improve accountability.
Of complaints since 2020, 95 percent resulted in no accountability outcome at all. Changing an abusive culture, and increasing the probability of accountability, can take many years and will face political headwinds. But as the many, often shocking, abuses documented by both organizations make strikingly clear, there is no other choice: this is a matter of democratic rule of law, both at the border and beyond it. The United States must bring its border law enforcement agencies’ day-to-day behavior back into alignment with its professed values, especially at a time of historic migration.
With:
Adam Isacson
Director for Defense Oversight, Washington Office on Latin America, WOLA
11:00-11:30 at the Atlantic Council and online: Guatemala’s choice: A conversation with presidential candidate Bernardo Arévalo (RSVP required).
12:30-1:30 at wilsoncenter.org: Argentina Elige: A Conversation with Diana Mondino, Senior Economic Adviser to Presidential Candidate Javier Milei (RSVP required).
2:00 at 310 Cannon House Office Building and online: Hearing of the House Homeland Security Subcommittees on Border Security and Enforcement and Counterterrorism, Law Enforcement, and Intelligence on The Real Cost of an Open Border: How Americans are Paying the Price.
Thursday, July 27
10:00 at 419 Dirksen Senate Office Building and online: Hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere, Transnational Crime, Civilian Security, Democracy, Human Rights, and Global Women’s Issues on Haiti: Next Steps on the International Response.
10:00 at 2237 Rayburn House Office Building and online: Hearing of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance on Oversight of the Drug Enforcement Administration.