11/14 Fall Talk with Bill O'Neill | Haiti: A human rights catastrophe: is there a way out of the abyss?

The Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) is delighted to host this session in collaboration with our Scholar in Residence, Bill O'Neill .

Haiti: A human rights catastrophe: is there a way out of the abyss? 
William O'Neill will be discussing the human rights situation in Haiti, regarding problems of gang violence and their impact on the enjoyment of rights, especially education, health care, food, clean water and shelter.  He will also discuss the sexual violence used to terrorize population and the near total failure of the Haitian state to guarantee basic rights. 

Please refer to this article, which highlights his experience and key takeaways during his visit to Haiti. 

William O'Neill 
William G. O’Neill is a lawyer specializing in humanitarian, human rights, and refugee law, with a special focus on the establishment and maintenance of the rule of law in post-conflict situations. In this capacity, he was senior advisor on human rights in the United Nations Mission in Kosovo, chief of the UN Human Rights Field Operation in Rwanda, and led the Legal Department of the UN/OAS Mission in Haiti. O’Neill was a major architect of the Kosovo Police School, an ongoing operation where he helped to design the curriculum and taught classes on human rights and policing. He also helped establish the Haitian National Police in 1995, advising on recruitment, testing and training the then new police force. He has also worked on judicial, police, and prison reform in Burundi, Liberia, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, East Timor, Nepal, and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

O’Neill is the United Nations Independent Expert on Human Rights in Haiti. He is a visiting professor of Human Rights Law at the University of Vienna and at the Scuola Sant’Anna in Pisa, Italy. He has created and delivered courses on human rights, rule of law and peacekeeping for a number of universities and peacekeeping training centers, and has taught senior military, police and humanitarian officials from dozens of countries.

An architect of the United Nation’s rule of law strategy through his chairmanship of the organization’s Task Force on Developing Rule of Law Strategies for Peace Operations, O’Neill also directed a research team at the Social Science Research Council dedicated to providing the UN with independent analyses of conflicts around the world. He has published widely on rule of law, human rights, and peacekeeping, including, Kosovo: An Unfinished Peace (Lynne Rynner Publishers, 2001) and Protecting Two Million Displaced: The Successes and Shortcomings of the African Union in Darfur (with Violette Cassis; Brookings, 2005). Fluent in French and conversant in Spanish, German, Italian and Haitian Creole, he has advised European foreign ministries on human rights issues and has testified before both houses of the U.S. Congress.

O’Neill’s undergraduate degree is from Haverford College, where he was a Thomas Watson fellow; he has masters degrees from Stanford University and the London School of Economics and a J.D. degree from New York University.

If you are interested in attending in-person, please register using this link.
If you are interested in attending online, please register using this link.
After registration, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

For any inquiries, please contact chrgj@nyu.edu. Thank you!