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Abstract:

Subnational conflict is the most widespread, enduring, and deadly form of conflict in Asia. Over the past 20 years (1992-2012), there have been 26 subnational conflicts in South and Southeast Asia, affecting half of the countries in this region. Concerned about foreign interference, national governments limit external access to conflict areas by journalists, diplomats, and personnel from international development agencies and non-governmental organizations. As a result, many subnational conflict areas are poorly understood by outsiders and easily overshadowed by larger geopolitical issues, bilateral relations, and national development challenges. The interactions between conflict, politics, and aid in subnational conflict areas are a critical blind spot for aid programs. This study was conducted to help improve how development agencies address subnational conflicts.

Speaker Bios:

Ben Oppenheim is a Fellow (non-resident) at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University. His research spans a diverse set of topics, including fragile states, transnational threats (including pandemic disease risks and terrorism), and the strategic coherence and effectiveness of international assistance in fragile and conflict-affected areas.

Oppenheim has consulted for organizations including the World Bank, the United Nations, the Asia Foundation, the Institute for the Future, and the Fritz Institute, on issues including organizational learning, strategy, program design, foresight, and facilitation. In 2009, he served as Advisor to the first global congress on disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration, supported by the World Bank and the UN.

In 2013, Oppenheim was a visiting fellow at the Uppsala University Forum on Democracy, Peace, and Justice. His research has been supported by a Simpson Fellowship, and a fellowship with the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. He was also a research fellow with UC Berkeley's Institute of International Studies, affiliated with the New Era Foreign Policy Project.

Nils Gilman is the Executive Director of Social Science Matrix. He holds a B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Berkeley. Gilman’s first scholarly interest was in American and European intellectual history, with a particular focus on the institutional development of the social sciences, the lateral transfer and translation of ideas across disciplinary boundaries, and the impact of social scientific ideas on politics and policy.

Gilman is the author of Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), the co-editor of Staging Growth: Modernization, Development, and the Global Cold War (University of Massachusetts Press, 2003) and Deviant Globalization: Black Market Economy in the 21st Century (Continuum Press, 2011), as well as the founding Co-editor of Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development. He also blogs and tweets.

Prior to joining Social Science Matrix in September 2013, Gilman was research director at Monitor 360, a San Francisco consultancy that addresses complex, cross-disciplinary global strategic challenges for governments, multinational businesses, and NGOs. He has also worked at a variety of enterprise software companies, including Salesforce.com, BEA Systems, and Plumtree Software. Gilman has taught and lectured at a wide variety of venues, from the Harvard University, Columbia University, and National Defense University, to PopTech, the European Futurists Conference, and the Long Now Foundation.

Bruce Jones is a senior fellow and the director of the Project on International Order and Strategy in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution. He is also the director of the Center on International Cooperation at New York University.

Jones served as the senior external advisor for the World Bank’s 2011 World Development Report, Conflict, Security and Development, and in March 2010 was appointed by the United Nations secretary-general as a member of the senior advisory group to guide the Review of International Civilian Capacities. He is also consulting professor at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University and professor (by courtesy) at New York University’s department of politics.

Jones holds a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics, and was Hamburg fellow in conflict prevention at Stanford University.

He is co-author with Carlos Pascual and Stephen Stedman of Power and Responsibility: Building International Order in an Era of Transnational Threats (Brookings Press, 2009); co-editor with Shepard Forman and Richard Gowan of Cooperating for Peace and Security (Cambridge University Press, 2009); and author of Peacemaking in Rwanda: The Dynamics of Failures(Lynne Reinner, 2001).

Jones served as senior advisor in the office of the secretary-general during the U.N. reform effort leading up to the World Summit 2005, and in the same period was acting secretary of the Secretary-General’s Policy Committee. In 2004-2005, he was deputy research director of the High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change. From 2000-2002 he was special assistant to and acting chief of staff at the office of the U.N. special coordinator for the Middle East peace process. 

Abstract:
The peoples of Burma/Myanmar have faced military rule, human rights violations, and poor health outcomes for decades. The country Is now undergoing a political liberalization, and multiple changes in political, social and economic life. The human rights and health situation of the country's many ethnic nationalities remain challenging, and represent one of the clearest threats to the prospect of successful transition to peace, and to democracy. We will explore the current health and human rights situation in the country, the ongoing threats to peace, and ways forward for this least developed nation as it emerges from 5 decades of military rule.

Chris Beyrer MD, MPH, is a professor of Epidemiology, International Health, and Health, Behavior, and Society at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is the founding Director of the University¹s Center for Public Health and Human Rights, which seeks to bring the tools of population-based sciences to bear on Health and rights threats. Dr. Beyrer also serves as Associate Director of the Johns Hopkins Centers for AIDS Research (CFAR) and of the Center for Global Health. He has been involved in health and human rights work with Burmese populations since 1993. Prof. Beyrer is the author of more than 200 scientific papers, and author or editor of six books, including War in the Blood: Sex, Politics and AIDS in Southeast Asia, and Public Health and Human Rights: Evidence-Based Approaches. He has served as a consultant and adviser to numerous national and international institutions, including the National Institutes of Health, the World Bank, WHO, UNAIDS, the Open Society Foundations, the Walter Reed Army Institute for Research, amfAR The Foundation for AIDS Research, Physicians for Human Rights and Human Rights Watch. Dr. Beyrer received a BA in History from Hobart and Wm. Smith Colleges, his MD from SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn, NY, and completed his residency in Preventive Medicine, public health training, an MPH and a Infectious Diseases Fellowship at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He received an honorary Doctorate (PhD) in Health Sciences from Chiang Mai University in Thailand, in 2012, in recognition of his 20 years of public health service in Thailand

Speaker bio:

Karl Eikenberry is the William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and a faculty member of the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University.  He is also an affiliated faculty member with the Center for Democracy, Development, and Rule of Law, and researcher with The Europe Center.

Prior to his arrival at Stanford, he served as the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan from May 2009 until July 2011, where he led the civilian surge directed by President Obama to reverse insurgent momentum and set the conditions for transition to full Afghan sovereignty.

He has served in various policy and political-military positions, including Deputy Chairman of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Military Committee in Brussels, Belgium; Director for Strategic Planning and Policy for U.S. Pacific Command at Camp Smith, Hawaii; U.S. Security Coordinator and Chief of the Office of Military Cooperation in Kabul, Afghanistan; Assistant Army and later Defense Attaché at the United States Embassy in Beijing, China; Senior Country Director for China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Mongolia in the Office of the Secretary of Defense; and Deputy Director for Strategy, Plans, and Policy on the Army Staff.

He is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, has master’s degrees from Harvard University in East Asian Studies and Stanford University in Political Science, and was a National Security Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

Ambassador Eikenberry earned an Interpreter’s Certificate in Mandarin Chinese from the British Foreign Commonwealth Office while studying at the United Kingdom Ministry of Defense Chinese Language School in Hong Kong and has an Advanced Degree in Chinese History from Nanjing University in the People’s Republic of China. 

His military awards include the Defense Distinguished and Superior Service Medals, Legion of Merit, Bronze Star, Ranger Tab, Combat and Expert Infantryman badges, and master parachutist wings.  He has received the Department of State Distinguished, Superior, and Meritorious Honor Awards, Director of Central Intelligence Award, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joint Distinguished Civilian Service Award.  He is also the recipient of the George F. Kennan Award for Distinguished Public Service and Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Centennial Medal.  His foreign and international decorations include the Canadian Meritorious Service Cross, French Legion of Honor, Afghanistan’s Ghazi Amir Amanullah Khan and Akbar Khan Medals, and the NATO Meritorious Service Medal.

Ambassador Eikenberry serves as a Trustee for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Asia Foundation, and the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Academy of Diplomacy, and the Council of American Ambassadors, and was previously the President of the Foreign Area Officers Association.  His articles and essays on U.S. and international security issues have appeared in Foreign Affairs, The Washington Quarterly, American Foreign Policy Interests, The New York Times,  The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, and The Financial Times.  He has a commercial pilot’s license and instrument rating, and also enjoys sailing and scuba diving.

This interdisciplinary workshop brings together scholars from the fields of law, political science and international relations, history, literature, film and digital humanities to examines the different ways societies address and judge war and conflict-related atrocities in the post-1945 era. 

Departing from the central role legal mechanisms and procedures play in the processed by which societies come to terms with their violent pasts, the workshop explores the various discourses that take part in such processes, and how they react to post-conflict legal institutions and shape different notions of justice that emerge from these transitional periods.

The event is organized and sponsored by the DLCL Research Unit with the support of CISAC, The Europe Center, DLCL, Department of Comparative Literature, Stanford Humanities Center and Jewish Studies.

VIDEOS:

Introduction:

Panel 1:

Panel 2: (Cooppan)

Panel 2:  (Viles)

Panel 3:

Keynote: