Professor Rodolfo Stavenhagen United Nations Human Rights Day

Thursday, December 8, 2005 at 7:30 pm

In observance of the United Nations Human Rights Day on December 10, the Rothko Chapel will host international professor, Rodolfo Stavenhagen. Professor Stavenhagen, emeritus of sociology at El Colegio de México (Mexico), is currently United Nations Special Reporter for the Human Rights of Indigenous People and Vice President of the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights. He will give a talk on the emerging international concern about the rights of indigenous peoples. First Nations, or Aboriginals as they are variously known, are longstanding victims of discrimination and marginalization and have often been dispossessed of their lands and resources as well as their cultural identities, a process that adds up to a grim picture of human rights abuses.

Over the last few decades indigenous peoples have claimed redress not only in their own countries, with varying results, but also before international organizations such as the United Nations. They challenge prevailing views of assimilation and demand respect for their individual and collective rights as distinct communities. As a result of their mobilization new policies are being set in place at the national and international levels, establishing a new area in the international human rights agenda.

Professor Stavenhagen was Assistant-Director General for Social Sciences at UNESCO in Paris, and a member of UNESCO’S Independent Commission on Education for the Twenty-First Century. In Mexico he founded the General Directorate for Popular Cultures in the Ministry of Public Education and the Mexican Academy of Human Rights, a private association. In 1997 he was awarded by the Mexican government the National Prize of Sciences and Arts.

He has been visiting professor at Harvard (2000-2001) and Stanford (1990-1993) universities in the U.S., at the University of Paris and the University of Geneva. His research interests include social development, agrarian problems, ethnic conflicts, indigenous peoples and human rights. Among his books are Ethnic Conflicts and the Nation-State, The Ethnic Question: Development, Conflict and Human Rights, Between Underdevelopment and Revolution: Essays on Latin America, Derechos humanos de los pueblos indígenas, and Entre la ley y la costumbre: el derecho consuetudinario indígena en América Latina. He also writes occasionally for Mexican newspapers on social, cultural and political affairs.