Currently we have recruited keynote speakers and workshop facilitators from across the United States as well as from around the world. We chose these women from among activists, scholars and professionals we feel are prominent in the field.

Naina Kapur--Lawyer and activist from the Supreme Court of India and Director of the New Delhi Violence Intervention Center, and Chair of the Asia-Pacific Advisory Forum.

Ms. Kapur will be addressing using international law to promote domestic measures to protect women from violence inthe public sphere. She will be talking about the Asia-Pacific Gender & Judges Project which is a an international project that seeks to educate judges and the justice system, within countries, about the role, necessity, use, and implementation of international laws established to protect women.

Dr. Louise Cainkar--University of hicago, IL

Dr. Cainkar will be discussing the experiences of Arab women immigrants and domestic violence and welfare reform. She will focus upon various health aspects of violence and obstacles to overcoming them.

Dr. Cainkar is a Research Assistant Professor o Great Cities Institute, University of Illinois - Chicago. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Northwestern University, her M.A. from Northwestern University, and her B.S. from University of Illinois at Chicago. Her areas of academic specialization include Immigrants, Migrants, and Refugees, Global and US Immigrant/Migrant Communities, Global and US Race and Ethnicity, Community-based Organizations and Community-Based Research, and International Human Rights.

Dr. Cainkar's current current research/writing include:

Socio-Economic Study of Iraqi Refugees in Chicago. [Funded by the Illinois Department of Human Services.]

When Permanent Migrants are Not Citizens, What Can Happen in the Case of War - The Case of the Palestinian Migrant Community in Kuwait. [Research funded by the Fulbright Commission. Initial data analysis funded by The National Endowment for the Humanities.]

A Comparative Study of Social Capital Among Low-Income Palestinian refugees/immigrants in Amman, Jordan and Chicago, Illinois. [Proposal Development]

Dr. Lori Cohen--Professor at the University of Michigan Law School

Lori Cohen is an adjunct professor at the University of Michigan Law School, where she teaches immigration law and serves as an advisor to the clinical program on refugee and asylum issues. Professor Cohen also represents immigrants for the Archdiocese of Detroit, Immigration Legal Services, and served as director there from 1996-1998. Professor Cohen has helped battered immigrant women to obtain legal status in the United States, and engages in community outreach and education on legal remedies available to immigrant domestic violence victims. Professor Cohen is the chair of the asylum committee for the Michigan Chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers' Association (AILA) and serves on the Advisory Board for Farmworker Legal Services. She also served as president of the Michigan Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Protection (MCIRP), a coalition of non-profit legal service providers for the immigrant community, from 1997-1998. Professor Cohen is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School.

Shingairai Chitanda--Shingairai Chitanda, Director, UM-Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Center, ANn Arbor, MI

Shingairai Chitanda currently serves as the Executive Director of the University of Michigan's Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Center. She is a women's rights activist and an international human rights lawyer who has worked as a law officer for Zimbabwe's Ministry of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Division, representing victims of sexual violence, and educating them of their rights and the legal process. She has helped draft the Unity Constitution between ZANU (PF) and PF-ZAPU (the document that ended the civil war in Zimbabwe). She has acted as Legal Consultant and Research/Action Associate for various NGOs in Harare, Zimbabwe, conducting research in prisons and conducting projects that identify the Zimbabwean government's compliance with international human rights standards and identifying legislation that worked against the advancement of women. She works with various NGOs such as Human Rights Watch to help establish and define rape as a war crime/weapon of war--one that should be tried just as any other crime against humanity in war crimes tribunals.

Dr. Perween Hasan--Dhaka University, Bangladesh.

Dr. Hasan will be speaking on the trend of acid burning that has become prominent within Bangladesh although it is practiced all over the world. Hundreds of women and young girls have fell victim to having sulfuric acid thrown on their faces--melting their faces--as a because of angry suitors or disagreement with their husbands. Professor Hasan's organization, Naripokkho, is a women's voluntary organization which deals with issues of activism. This organization has mobilized public opinion on various issues like action against the state when Bangladesh was declared an Islamic state (they advocate secularism), and dealing with issues such acid throwing and other forms of violence against women, women's health, and working with sex workers who have been thrown out of their homes.

Giulia Tamayo Leon -Women's rights activist from Peru.

Ms. Leon works to stop violence against women in the public health system. Ms. Leon works for the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defense of Women's Rights, specifically focusing on violence against women in times of peace or conflict. In recent years she has focused on reporting violations to women's human rights in the context of health facilities in Peru. "Silence and Complicity. Violence against women in the health facilities in Peru, and "Nothing personal. Human rights report on sterilization in Peru." Currently, she is concluding a Regional Balance on Violence against Women in times of peace or conflict.

This year she is being honored by Amnesty International with their Ginetta Sagan Fund Award (2000). This award is given annually "to women who have demonstrate outstanding achievements, often in the face of personal danger, to help women and/or children who are victims of violence".

Dr. Bonnie Oh--Washington, D.C's National Coalition on Comfort Women

Dr. Bonnie B.C. Oh (University of Chicago) is currently holding the post of the Distinguished Professor of Korean Studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, is serving as the coordinator of Korean Studies and as the interim director of the Women's Studies Program. Last fall, she was also appointed as the University's Main Campus Ombudsperson. She is an expert on issues regarding sexual slavery and the use of comfort women in Korea and (in Japan during WWII). Her workshop will focus on the the stories of survivors, the obstacles they faced and continue to do so in their respective countries.

Pioneers for Peace--Detroit, Michigan

Pioneers for Peace is a violence prevention and awareness program sponsored by The Detroit Medical Center's Rehabilitation Institute of Michigan (RMI). Pioneer members are a group of former RIM patients who have sustained disabling injuries as a result of interpersonal violence. Instead of viewing their disabilities as a tragedy, they see it as an opportunity to make a difference by becoming advocates for violence prevention.  

Dr. Aysan Sev'er--University of Toronto, Department of Sociology.

Dr. Sev'er is a graduate of the University of Windsor with an honours B.A. in psychology. She received her Master's degree from the University of Windsor in Sociology and completed a Ph.D. in Sociology from YorkUniversity. Her scholarly publications include works on male violence, sexual harassment, rape, domestic and family violence and have been published in journals such as the Canadian Journal of Sociology, Atlantis, Violence Against Women, Canadian Ethnic Studies, Social Psychology Quarterly, etc. She has three books addressing Women and Divorce, Women's Studies and Cross-Cultural Explorations of Wife Abuse. She wasthe principal organizer of a conference entitled: "Violations: Gender-based Risks in Women's Lives," that took place in April of 1999 at the University of Toronto. Her work right now is focused on issues of honor killings in Turkey and she is organizing a session on violence against women at the Canadian Sociological Conferences in Alberta.

Natalya Timoshkina--From the Former Soviet Union, Timoshkina is a PHD candidate at the University of Toronto.

Ms. Timoshkina will be presenting her paper on the trafficking of prostitutes from the Newly Independent States of the Eastern Bloc. She will be discussing the various definitions of "trafficking" and how new research shows that various factors have fostered the international environment for trafficking women. In addition she will discuss the contributions of poverty/ unemployment, development strategies, migration laws and policies, and corruption of authorities to the situation of trafficking from the Eastern Bloc and the international system in existence today.