[Mitai-announce] [Phrj-list] Democracy and Development: The Human Rights Crisis in Nepal, April 21

[Program on Human Rights and Justice]

Please join DUSP Student Forum this Thursday for a talk by Professor William
Fisher of Clark University on:

Democracy and Development: The Human Rights Crisis in Nepal

Thursday April 21, 2005
5:30-7:00 p.m.
Location: 10-485 
Refreshments will be served
Co-sponsored by the MIT Program on Human Rights and DUSP Student Forum

The current human rights crisis in Nepal emanates from the nine-year-old 
civil war between the government and the Maoist party, which in 1996 
declared a "people's war" and intention to abolish the monarchy and 
establish a people's republic.  More than 10,000 people have been killed in 
the violence since, culminating in King Gyanendra's coup on February 1, 
2005, which eliminated the freedom of speech and has isolated Nepal from 
the media that might otherwise have publicized grave human rights abuses 
including disappearances, detentions, torture, and unlawful killing. Please 
join us for a discussion of the roots and future of this dire situation and 
the role of the international community.

Anthropologist William F. Fisher, Director of International Development, 
Community, and Environment and Professor of International Development at 
Clark University, explores the complex efforts of NGOs, social movements 
and transnational advocacy networks to enable local communities to better 
compete for access to natural resources, achieve sustainable development 
and aspire to social justice. From 1992 to 2000 Professor Fisher taught in 
the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University, where he was Director 
of Graduate Studies in Anthropology and a Dillon Fellow at the Weatherhead 
Center for International Affairs. He also taught at Princeton University 
and Columbia, where he served as assistant director of Columbia's Center 
for South Asian Studies and directed the Economic and Political Development 
specialization at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs. 
His research centers on the social and environmental impact of large dams, 
forced displacement, transnational advocacy, competition over natural 
resources and non-governmental organizations. His research and work for 
such agencies as CARE, USAID, and the UNDP have taken him to several 
continents. Other research activities, mostly in South Asia, include ethnic 
associations, competition for natural resources, non-governmental 
associations, and the role of participation and community-based 
institutions in development planning and action.

Since living in remote villages in the Himalayas for a year, Fisher has 
returned often to Nepal to conduct field research on the emergence and 
strategies of ethnic associations, such as the Janajati Mahasangh. His 
study of the economic innovation, cultural transformation and migration 
among the Thakali of central Nepal culminated in the publication of Fluid 
Boundaries: Forming and Transforming Thakali Identity in Nepal (2001), 
followed by "The Politics of Difference and the Reach of Modernity: 
Reflections on the State and Civil Society in Central Nepal," in Resistance 
and the State: Nepalese Experiences (2003).


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