NEW CENTER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS, GENDER AND MIGRATION
Based at the university’s Institute for Public Health, this new center is led by Kim Thuy Seelinger, research associate professor at the Brown School and a visiting professor at the School of Law. Seelinger will create a transdisciplinary platform for faculty from across campus to share and support their existing work relating to human rights, gender and migration. The Center will also serve as a lab in which interdisciplinary faculty teams can tackle complex human rights problems together and develop new, collaborative research focused on these challenges. A similar lab will be created for students from the Brown School and the schools of Law and Medicine, whom Seelinger and affiliated faculty will lead in mixed teams on real-world projects. A high-level advisory board of both WashU faculty as well as experts from around the world will help guide all of these efforts. “Having input from the world’s leading policymakers and practitioners on these issues will help keep the Center’s work practice-facing and impactful,” Seelinger said.
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Brown School | Global Impact
Current projects include: Intimate Partner Violence as a Basis for Asylum In partnership with the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), the Center is finalizing a report on the practical and legal challenges faced by survivors of intimate partner violence who seek asylum in different parts of the Americas. A second project will conduct workshops with UNHCR and local service providers to help enable safe disclosure of sexual and gender-based violence for migrants and refugees traveling through Guatemala and Mexico. Evaluation of Holistic Care for Survivors of Sexual Violence At the request of 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Denis Mukwege, Seelinger led a fall 2019 mission to Panzi Hospital in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to begin an evaluation of the hospital’s holistic care for survivors of sexual violence. Panzi’s services include medical, psychosocial, livelihood and legal support. This evaluation will help identify the potential (and challenges) of providing holistic care in a resourcelimited, conflict-affected context.