UNA NZ - Wellington Branch - Human Rights Day 2023

Join the United Nations Association of New Zealand (UNA NZ) - Wellington Branch on Sunday, December 10, 2023 from 4 - 6pm for Human Rights Day.

This Human Rights Day will mark the 75th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

The event is being held in Room RHMZ03, Rutherford House, Pipitea Campus, Victoria University. RHMZ03 is located on the first floor of Rutherford House. There will also be signs and people to help show you where the room is on the day.

The theme for this year's event is "Disarmament and Human Rights" and will consist of a four person panel discussion followed by questions and an open discussion.

Light snacks and non-alcoholic refreshments will be served at the event. Students, non-waged and UNA NZ member tickets are $10. Waged non-UNA NZ member tickets are $15.

Panelists:

First panelist - Dr. Roderic Alley, Senior Fellow at the Centre for Strategic Studies.

Dr. Roderic Alley was formerly Associate Professor of International Politics and International Relations at Victoria University of Wellington, and a graduate of Victoria University and the London School of Economics. He is currently Senior Fellow at the Centre for Strategic Studies Victoria University of Wellington. He has published on foreign relations, human rights, international organisations, international relations in the Pacific, international humanitarian law, and arms control and disarmament.

Second panelist - Colin Keating, former New Zealand Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York.

Colin Keating is a former New Zealand diplomat who has served in Samoa, London and Washington. He was New Zealand Ambassador to the UN in New York and represented New Zealand on the UN Security Council. He is recognised as a leading global authority on the UN Security Council. For seven years he worked for Colombia University in New York as Executive Director of the organisation “Security Council Report”. Mr Keating is an international lawyer and served as the Legal Adviser of the New Zealand Foreign Ministry. He was responsible for leading the policy and legal work in New Zealand for the ratification of the Human Rights Covenants and a number of other UN Human rights treaties. He was also appointed as Secretary for Justice and has worked in the private sector in New Zealand as a partner in legal practice. Currently, Mr Keating advises on a range of international and other matters.

Third panelist - Dr Paul Oestreicher OBE, Vice-President of CND UK (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament).

Dr Paul Oestreicher (MA, DD) was until 1998 Director of the Centre for International Reconciliation at Coventry Cathedral in the UK.
Throughout the years of the Cold War, he was the emissary of the British Council of Churches to the churches behind the Iron Curtain.
He is a political scientist, journalist and an Anglican priest. He is a former Chairman of the British section of Amnesty International. He joined Amnesty at its formation in 1961 and was Chairman from 1975-1979. He has been on Amnesty missions to East Germany, to negotiate freedom for Ulbricht’s prize political prisoner Heinz Brandt, to Israel, in the quest to have Mordechai Vanunu who had exposed Israel’s nuclear status, to be freed, and to apartheid South Africa, where he helped to negotiate the end of the conflict between the ANC and the Inkatha Freedom Party under Buthelezi. He also negotiated with the German Attorney General on the prison conditions for the RAF (Red Army Faction, known as the Baader-Meinhof gang).
He is still Vice-President of CND UK (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament).
In addition to a number of Honorary Doctorates from universities in the UK and NZ, in 2022 he was awarded an OBE in Queen Elizabeth II’s last Honours list.
He returned to live permanently in New Zealand in 2020 with his wife Professor Barbara Einhorn.

Fourth panelist - Professor Barbara Einhorn, Professor Emerita of Gender Studies at the University of Sussex, Brighton, UK and Adjunct Professor at the Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies at Victoria University of Wellington.

Barbara Einhorn is Professor Emerita of Gender Studies at the University of Sussex, Brighton, UK and Adjunct Professor at the Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, where she is researching transnational identity ‘under observation’.
Barbara is known internationally for her work on gender, citizenship and women’s movements in Central and Eastern Europe before and after the Fall of the Berlin Wall, with two major book publications: Cinderella Goes to Market: Citizenship, Gender and Women’s Movements in East Central Europe (1993); Citizenship in an Enlarging Europe: From Dream to Awakening (2006; paperback with extended new introduction 2010). She has also researched issues of gender and nation, and gender, peace and conflict.
Barbara has been a feminist and peace movement activist for most of her life, in New Zealand, Australia, the UK and Germany. Her involvement with a dissident peace group in communist East Germany, the Women for Peace, led to her being arrested and imprisoned in December 1983 – a time when the world narrowly avoided nuclear meltdown - in the main Berlin Stasi prison.

The United Nations Association of New Zealand -Te Roopu Whakakotahi Whenua o Aotearoa (UNA NZ) is a national community organisation and registered charity. Our goal is to help New Zealanders understand the United Nations and to promote engagement with the United Nations system. To learn more about UNA NZ visit our website www.unanz.org.nz or follow us on social media.

For further enquiries about the event, please contact pat.metham@unanz.org.nz.