Please join the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy for its signature weekly series this fall, The Fierce Urgency of Now, featuring Black, Indigenous, People of Color scholars, activists, and community leaders, and experts from the Global South. Hosted and facilitated by Sushma Raman and Mathias Risse, the series also aligns with a course they will co-teach this fall at the Harvard Kennedy School on Economic Justice: Theory and Practice. Learn more: https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/event/human-rights

Panelists:

Aminta Ossom | Clinical Instructor, International Human Rights Law Clinic, Harvard Law School
Salil Shetty | former Secretary General, Amnesty International

Aminta Ossom is a Clinical Instructor at the International Human Rights Clinic. She focuses on equality, inclusion, and economic and social rights. She also has research interests in human rights diplomacy, the role of identity in advocacy, and symbioses between civil and human rights movements. Prior to joining the Human Rights Program in Fall 2019, Aminta was a human rights officer at the United Nations, where she supported the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture and the Special Rapporteurs of the Human Rights Council in fact-finding, advocacy and training in Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia and Europe. Before joining the UN, Aminta taught international human rights at Fordham Law School as a Crowley Fellow in International Human Rights and Adjunct Professor of Law.  There she designed and led a field study examining barriers to education faced by persons with disabilities in Rwanda. She has also served as a supervising attorney for independent clinical and externship students. After graduating from Harvard Law School in 2009, Aminta focused on transitional justice, including as a Satter Human Rights Fellow with Amnesty International in West Africa. While at HLS, she was a dedicated member of the International Human Rights Clinic. She also holds a Masters in African Politics from SOAS, University of London, and a BA from the University of Oklahoma.

Salil Shetty joined Amnesty International as the organization’s eighth Secretary General in 2010. A long-term activist on poverty and justice, Salil Shetty leads the movement’s worldwide work to end human rights violations and has spearheaded a significant move of Amnesty International’s work to the global south. Before joining Amnesty International, he was Director of the United Nations Millennium Campaign from 2003 to 2010, credited with significantly increasing awareness of and accountability for the Millennium Development Goals across the world.From 1998 to 2003, Salil Shetty was Chief Executive of ActionAid, a leading international development NGO.