The Human Cost: Syria in Crisis and Human Rights Moderator: Talip Küçükcan, SETA Speakers: Walid Saffour President, The Syrian Human Rights Committee (SHRC) Nadim Houry, Deputy Director, Human Rights Watch (HRW), Middle East and North Africa Division Cengiz Çandar, Journalist, Radikal
Date / Time: April 26, 2012 Thursday / 11.00-13.00 pm Venue: SETA Foundation, Ankara Hall Nenehatun Caddesi No: 66 GOP, Cankaya 06700 ANKARA
SETA invites you to attend a panel discussion with Walid Saffour of The Syrian Human Rights Committee, Nadim Houry of Human Rights Watch, and journalist Cengiz Çandar to discuss the Syrian crisis from a human rights perspective. The seminar will examine the systematic human rights violations, the impact of those violations on the Syrian people, and the increasing flight of Syrian refugees to neighboring countries. The speakers will address the following questions: What are the accusations (extrajudicial executions, crimes against humanity, etc.) against Syrian authorities? Do the human rights NGOs in Syria and the world have capacity to uncover and report human rights abuses? What is the role of international organizations (the UN Human Rights Council, the International Criminal Court, the Arab League, etc.) in stopping the violations in Syria? We very much hope you will be able to attend this special panel discussion. Please kindly RSVP to [email protected] / + 90 312 551 21 66
Note: Panel discussion will be held in English with simultaneous translation into Turkish.Walid SaffourWalid Saffour is a Syrian human rights activist, and the current president of the Syrian Human Rights Committee. He was arrested and tortured for several times before he was obliged to leave Syria in 1981. He has contributed to many human rights researches and articles about the situation in syria. He was born in Homs (1950) and holds MA degree in linguistics and translation theory from London.
Nadim Houry Nadim Houry is Human Rights Watch's deputy director of its Middle East and North Africa division, and he is director of the Beirut office. Prior to joining Human Rights Watch, Houry served as deputy counsel for the Volcker Commission, where he spent more than a year conducting fact-finding missions in the Middle East as part of the United Nation's corruption inquiry into the Oil-for-Food Programme. An attorney by training, Houry worked as a corporate lawyer for Shearman & Sterling in New York for the two years.
Cengiz Çandar is a Turkish journalist and researcher. He began his career as journalist in 1976 in the newspaper Vatan after living some years in the Middle East and Europe due to his opposition to the regime in Turkey following the military intervention in 1971. An expert for the Middle East (Lebanon and Palestine) and the Balkans (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Çandar worked for the Turkish News Agency and several leading Turkish newspapers. He has also been a columnist for Lebanon’s al-Mustaqbal newspaper and Turkey’s Turkish Daily News and New Anatolian newspapers, which are published in the English. Çandar served as special adviser to Turkish President Turgut Özal between 1991 and 1993. He also lectured on History and Politics in the Middle East at Istanbul Bilgi University, Istanbul Kültür University and Özyeğin University.
