My name is Ella Ross (’23 IRE/HMR). This week I’ve been part of the team representing UC Davis Human Rights Studies and the Article 26 Backpack at the UNESCO 2023 World Forum on Human Rights (FMDH) in in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The greatest concentration of Syrian refugees in the world is in the zone of destruction created by this week’s earthquake in Turkey.  

Already living on the political and economic margins and often in substandard housing, refugee communities in the region will disproportionately suffer from this natural disaster.  At Article 26 Backpack we stand with them and all those harmed by the quake.  

British-Ghanian architect David Adjaye’s design of the National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall in Washington, DC grabs you by both shoulders and demands that you not look away as it draws you down into the painful story at the heart of America’s past.

This year’s O’Brien Prize for Individual Achievement in Human Rights Education went to Professor Susan Katz of University of San Francisco School of Education for her work creating the West Coast’s leading Human Rights Education graduate program, and graduates from her program have worked with us here at UC Davis and with great success.&nbs

The University of California, Davis Human Rights Studies Program recognizes that University of California graduate students, researchers, student employees and postdocs have engaged in efforts to secure fair wages, benefits and working conditions.  Considering these efforts, we express our support for our fellow academic workers and call on the UC to bargain in good faith and hope a just and fair agreement can be achieved quickly.   

We also reaffirm our support for Article 23:3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)

The UC Davis Human Rights Studies Program stands in solidarity with the people of Iran as many have taken to streets in protest of the death in custody of a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman, Zhina Mahsa Amini. She was arrested and beaten by members of Iran’s Gašt-e Eršād or Guidance Patrol, more commonly called, the “morality police” for allegedly wearing her hijab — a legally required headscarf — improperly.

Today is the 56th anniversary of the premier of Star Trek.  Unique among Human Rights Studies programs globally, at UC Davis we emphasize the role of literature, the arts, music and film and television in human rights thought, practice and advocacy.

Noted scholar of genocide, Alexander Hinton, citing both the transfer of Ukrainian children to Russian institutions and families and the embrace of the specious argument by Putin and others that the war against Ukraine is an effort to cleanse — to “de-Nazify” — is evidence enough that beyond war crimes and crimes against humanity, Russia is committing genocide in Ukraine.  I’m in general agreement with Hinton, especially as news of the

It is with great sadness, and condolences to the people of South Africa, that the UC Davis Human RIghts Studies Program marks the passing of human rights hero and leader of the anti-Apartheid movement, Archbishop Desmond Tutu.  Bishop Tutu’s death gives us the joyful opportunity, too, to recall his 1985 tour of US college and university campuses to build awareness of the Anti-Apartheid movement and support for economic sanctions, including divestment, against the racist South African régime.