On February 8, the Program on Human Rights' at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law welcomed Madeleine Rees to speak as part of the Sanela Diana Jenkins Human Rights Series. A former UN High Commissioner on Human Rights in Bosnia, Rees now serves as the Secretary General of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) based in Geneva.

Recounting her experience in the Balkans, Rees described the failure of international organizations to properly consider the role of gender in their work. Specifically, she highlighted the UN and other organizations' inability to control rampant human trafficking in the Balkans. According to Rees, human trafficking continues to undermine women's sense of security and societal rehabilitation efforts. To remedy social insecurity in post-conflict areas, Rees suggested that international projects must comprehensively and collaboratively address the problems in these societies, especially the conditions that the most vulnerable women face.

In this same vein, Rees declared a need for greater collaboration among women's rights NGO's, human rights institutions, universities and activists. She discussed the need to break down the barriers that exist between these stakeholders. She also emphasized the role of universities like Stanford to disseminate information and conduct research that helps organizations like WILPF to succeed. Noting the daunting challenges ahead, Rees concluded by reaffirming her commitment to the fight for human rights, saying, "The good thing about being a naïve idealist is that we don't give up."

In January-April 2011, the Program on Human Rights will host the Sanela Diana Jenkins International Human Rights Speaker Series, a weekly series featuring presentations by leading scholars of human rights. The series will comprise 10 high profile international and domestic human rights scholars, lawyers and activists who have made significant contributions to international justice, women and children's rights, environmental rights and indigenous rights.

Sanela Diana Jenkins has turned a life of hardship into triumph, as she has developed into a successful business woman, a devoted mother, and a philanthropist.

As a native of Sarajevo, Bosnia, Jenkins lived her childhood and teenage years in the midst of genocide. She lived in the country long enough to graduate from Sarajevo University with a degree in economics. Shortly thereafter, Jenkins was forced to flee her homeland during the conflict in Bosnia, which was responsible for the death of her brother Irnis. Compelled to leave her parents behind, Jenkins found herself as a refugee in London, where she was eventually granted asylum.

It was in England where Jenkins began to lay the groundwork for her future. Jenkins enrolled in London's City University to further her education. During her schooling, she learned English and worked odd jobs to support her parents back in Sarajevo. Not long after Jenkins discovered her new-found freedom, she met her husband Roger Jenkins, a financial executive in London, who was teaching classes at City University.

Jenkins has dedicated a large part of her attention back to her native land by establishing The Sanela Diana Jenkins Foundation for Bosnia in Memory of Irnis Catic. The Foundation, which is closely associated with the funding of the medical school at the University of Sarajevo, aims to provide financial support toward establishing Bosnian schools and orphanages. Additionally, it is instrumental in building homes for the country's poor, supplying emergency aid & relief, and cleaning the country's lakes and polluted areas. The Foundation is the largest privately funded Bosnian organization of its kind. In 2008, Jenkins won the Mostar Peace Connection Prize for her humanitarian work.

The Korean Studies Program (KSP) of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) is pleased to announce that Mr. John Everard will join the Center for the 2010-2011 academic year. Mr. Everard's research will be on North Korean life and society. During his fellowship at the Center, he will hold seminars related to his research project and will be involved in various projects on Korea.

With frequent appearances on BBC discussing North Korea, Mr. Everard, former British Ambassador to North Korea, 2006-2008, will bring extensive knowledge of North Korea, China and South America to APARC.  He served as British Ambassador to Uruguay in 2001-2005, and was head of the Political Section in Beijing 2000-2001.  He was responsible for political relations with the troubled states of West Africa and managed mutinational efforts to restore democracy to Bosnia, 1995-1998.  He became the youngest British Ambassador to Belarus in 1993.

Mr. Everard studied French, German and Chinese at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and studied Chinese history and economics at Bejing University. He holds an MA from Manchester Business School.

Pantech Fellowships, generously funded by Pantech Group of Korea, are intended to cultivate a diverse international community of scholars and professionals committed to and capable of grappling with challenges posed by developments in Korea. We invite individuals from the United States, Korea, and other countries to apply.

This WSJ article by Peter Beck originally appeared as Shorenstein APARC Dispatch in April 2010

North Korea is usually described as the "most isolated country on earth," its people effectively cut off from the outside world. My research tells a different story-that perhaps one million North Koreans are secretly listening to foreign radio broadcasts. The number of listeners is believed to be growing, which is all the more amazing when one considers that North Korean authorities only distribute radios with fixed dials, assiduously jam foreign broadcasts, and send citizens caught listening to foreign radio to the country's notorious gulags for as long as ten years.

Over a dozen radio stations from the United States, South Korea, and Japan currently broadcast to North Korea. Voice of America (VOA), one of the most popular stations, has been broadcasting to the North since 1942, while the equally popular Radio Free Asia (RFA) began its Korean broadcasts soon after being created by Congress in 1997. VOA focuses on news of the United States and the world, while RFA concentrates on the two Koreas. RFA also carries commentaries by two Korean speakers who grew up in the former Soviet Union and Romania. RFA serves as a substitute for the lack of a "free" station in North Korea, but unlike a typical "surrogate station"-which would be staffed largely by émigrés-RFA only employs one North Korean defector.

South Korea's "Global Korean Network" has been declining in popularity since it ceased to focus on North Korea and adopted a decidedly soft approach after the election of Kim Dae-jung as president in 1997. However, three stations run by North Korean defectors have sprouted up over the past few years, led by Free North Korea Radio (FRNK). These stations employ stringers in North Korea who can communicate by cell phone or smuggle out interviews through China. As a result, information is flowing in and out of the North more rapidly than ever. For example, when major economic reforms were undertaken in 2002, it was months before the rest of the world knew. In contrast, when the regime launched a disastrous currency reform on November 30, 2009, FNKR filed a report within hours.

How do we know that North Koreans are actually listening to foreign broadcasts? First, on dozens of occasions, authorities in Pyongyang have used their own media to attack foreign broadcasters. The North reserves the insult "reptile" exclusively to describe foreign broadcasters. In late March 2010, the regime likened defector broadcasters to "human trash." Ironically, this diatribe also contained the first official mention of the currency revaluation, so broadcasters have clearly struck a nerve. If they were in fact irrelevant, the regime would ignore them instead of lavishing them with free publicity.

Broadcasters to North Korea frequently receive heartbreaking messages from North Koreans in China, thanking them for their efforts. One listener described RFA as "our one ray of hope." More importantly, over the past several years, thousands of North Korean defectors, refugees, and visitors to China have been interviewed about their listening habits. An unpublished 2009 survey of North Koreans in China found that over 20 percent had listened to the banned broadcasts, and almost all of them had shared the information with family members and friends. Several other surveys confirm these findings. While we cannot generalize the listening habits of a self-selected group to the general population, it is not unreasonable to conclude that there are more than a million surreptitious listeners. The North Korean regime is not only losing its monopoly on the control of information; defectors also cite foreign radio listening as one of the leading motivations to defect.

Despite valiant efforts and growing impact, much more could be done to improve broadcasting to North Korea. VOA and RFA only broadcast five hours a day, and the defector stations limp along with shoestring budgets, due to a pervasive indifference within South Korea.

President Obama's human rights envoy for North Korea, Robert King, has pledged to expand funding for Korean broadcasting. For its part, Pyongyang claims that foreign broadcasts are part of the Obama administration's "hostile policy" toward the North. Only time will tell if these efforts will lead to change we can believe in-both in Washington and Pyongyang.