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.

Speaker bio:

Thomas Carothers is vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is the founder and director of the Democracy and Rule of Law Program and oversees Carnegie Europe in Brussels.

Carothers is a leading authority on international support for democracy, rights, and governance and on comparative democratization as well as an expert on U.S. foreign policy. He has worked on democracy-assistance projects for many public and private organizations and carried out extensive field research on international aid efforts around the world. In addition, he has broad experience in matters dealing with human rights, the rule of law, civil society building, and think tank development in transitional and developing countries.

He is the author of six critically acclaimed books as well as many articles in prominent journals and newspapers. Carothers has also worked extensively with the Open Society Foundations (OSF), including currently as chair of the OSF Think Tank Fund and previously as chair of the OSF Global Advisory Board. He is an adjunct professor at the Central European University in Budapest and was previously a visiting faculty member at Nuffield College, Oxford University, and Johns Hopkins SAIS.

Prior to joining the Endowment, Carothers practiced international and financial law at Arnold & Porter and served as an attorney adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State.

Carothers is the co-author (with Diane de Gramont) of Development Aid Confronts Politics: The Almost Revolution (Carnegie, 2013) and author of Confronting the Weakest Link: Aiding Political Parties in New Democracies (Carnegie, 2006); Promoting the Rule of Law Abroad: In Search of Knowledge (Carnegie, 2006); Uncharted Journey: Promoting Democracy in the Middle East, co-edited with Marina Ottaway (Carnegie, 2005); Critical Mission: Essays on Democracy Promotion (Carnegie, 2004); Funding Virtue: Civil Society Aid and Democracy Promotion, co-edited with Marina Ottaway (Carnegie, 2000); Aiding Democracy Abroad: The Learning Curve (Carnegie, 1999); and Assessing Democracy Assistance: The Case of Romania (Carnegie, 1996).

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At the November 2013 Third Plenum, China’s leaders committed to an ambitious program of economic reform.  Now their challenge is to convert those commitments into a realistic and sustained program of change.  Barry Naughton, just back from fall term at Tsinghua University in Beijing, examines the achievements and obstacles, and discusses how these fit in with the other initiatives of Xi Jinping’s complex emerging agenda.

Barry Naughton is a professor at the University of California, San Diego.  He is one of the world’s top experts on the Chinese economy, and a long-term analyst of Chinese economic policy. Naughton received his Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University in 1986.  Naughton was named the So Kuanlok Professor at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS) of the University of California at San Diego in 1998.  He has consulted extensively for the World Bank, as well as for corporate clients.  Naughton is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is a non-resident fellow of the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.  

This event is co-sponsored with CEAS and is part of the China under Xi Jinping series.

Co-sponsored by the Stanford Center for International Development

Under what conditions is decentralization most likely to foster development and reduce poverty?  Plausible answers include:  a sufficiently committed central government; local checks against corruption; and sufficiently resourced actors able to deliver public services effectively. Indonesia is a good place to explore the explanatory power of these and other propositions, thanks to the country’s diverse local conditions and the rapid and sweeping (“Big Bang”) decentralization that it underwent in the late 1990s.  In his disaggregation of the Indonesian case since then, Dr. Sumarto will examine whether, how, and why poverty alleviation has been helped or hurt by particular economic, social, and political variations in the context and character of local governments across the archipelago.

Sudarno Sumarto was an Asia Foundation Visiting Fellow at APARC in 2009-2010.  In 2001-2009 he was the director of SMERU, a highly regarded independent institute for research and public policy studies in Jakarta.  He has served as a consulting economist for the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, among other organizations, and has taught in Indonesia’s leading universities. His latest publication is Explaining Regional Heterogeneity of Poverty:  Evidence from Decentralized Indonesia (co-authored, 2013).  Earlier titles include more than sixty co-authored books, working papers, articles, chapters, and reports on topics such as poverty, decentralization, employment, vulnerability, and economic growth.  His degrees in economics include a PhD and an MA from Vanderbilt University and a BSc from Satya Wacana Christian University (Salatiga).

Lunch will be served.

Kavita Srivatsava, one of India's leading activists will be joining us for an informal conversation on activism around hunger, peace and justice in India.  Kavita is Secretary of People's Union for Civil Liberties, that has been at the forefront of the struggle for civil, political and socio-economic justice in India.  She is the petitioner in the internationally renowned ‘Right to food’ litigation in the Supreme Court of India, one of the most impactful socio-economic litigations in India.  She has also played a prominent role in women's movements in Rajasthan and has worked on numerous cases of violence against women. 

In addition these core issues, Kavita has also worked on issues such as communal violence, landmines in the Indo-Pak border, election monitoring in Kashmir, supporting Dalits networks an on practically every major social issue in North India.  Come join us for an informal conversation on hunger, peace and justice with this versatile activist.

Time: 3 pm

Date: 12 Nov, 2013 (Tuesday)

Location: E008 Encina Hall (East)

Supported by:

Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law

Center for South Asia

San Jose Peace and Justice Center