Letter from the Director Dear friends, This has been a challenging year for human rights. In the United States and around the world, the very concept of human rights has faced growing resistance as political movements have demanded rollbacks of rights protections for people of color, workers, the disabled, women, and LGBTQ populations. New expressions

When 93-year-old Don Tacho Pereira took the stand this June in the rural town of San Francisco Gotera, El Salvador, he made history. Don Tacho lost seven family members in the December 1981 massacre of El Mozote; he only survived because he was away from home during the three-day killing spree that many still consider

I was grateful to have been the recipient of the 2017 Jennifer Caldwell Fellowship from the University of Washington Center for Human Rights. The fellowship allowed me to return to my native Jamaica for three months to do preliminary field interviews for my dissertation in sociology. My dissertation explores how different state officials, private sector

Thanks to the funds from the Benjamin Linder Justice Award, I was able to travel to El Salvador for three weeks to support and learn about the work of Asociación Pro-Búsqueda, an organization that investigates cases of children who were disappeared or separated involuntarily from their families in the context of the armed conflict in El

I am honored to have been named the UW Center for Human Right’s 2017 Mack-Mayerfeld Fellow. This award has made an invaluable contribution to my dissertation research in three specific areas. First, this grant award afforded me access to a variety of resources and networks that allowed me to strengthen and complete an article (“Renouncing

My time back in Korea since I left Seattle in June has been a whirlwind of valuable experiences. I have spent most of my time in the field, observing various festivals, meeting with activists and interviewing informants who are providing rich sources of information to help me with my dissertation. Here in South Korea, the

With the support of the Abe Osheroff and Gunnel Clark Award I was able to continue my work with the International Human Rights Clinic at the University of Washington School of Law throughout the of summer 2017. The Clinic represents a grassroots organization of undocumented and formally detained immigrants in Washington. I assisted in drafting

During early 2017, U.S. political headlines were dominated by political maneuvering and grassroots organizing prompted by Congressional attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Now health care reform is in the news again with the announcement of Senator Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare For All” bill. Gunnar Almgren is a Professor at the UW School of Social

On June 19, 2017, the first day of the summer strawberry harvest, farmworkers at Sakuma Brothers Farm in the Skagit Valley began picking berries in the early morning fog. As they did so, they were making history. After four years of struggle that grew from local walk-outs and strikes to a national boycott against the

On the fifth anniversary of the founding of the UW Center for Human Rights’ Freedom of Information project in June 2017, the University of Washington Libraries have published a collection of declassified United States government documents which the Center obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. UWCHR Research Fellow Emily Willard shares the history