A specialist in international human rights standards will speak Thursday, October 20, at the University of Notre Dame.

Hannah Wu will deliver “A Journey to Human Rights,” the 2005 Distinguished Alumni Lecture sponsored by the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. Wu, a 1990 graduate of the institute’s masters degree program, will speak at 8 p.m. in the auditorium of the Hesburgh Center for International Studies.

She will give a less formal presentation at 1 p.m. Monday, October 24, in room C-103 of the Hesburgh Center. Both lectures are open to the public.

Wu will discuss what it takes to advance human rights at the national and international levels, and varying attitudes towards human rights. Protecting human rights, she contends, is about "means and will" and every country has human rights violations.

Wu has worked since 1994 at the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland. One of her areas of focus is technical cooperation in the field of human rights, by which the United Nations aims at assisting countries in overcoming their human rights deficiencies. Most recently, she was a member of a small team that developed the UN’s Plan of Action in response to the UN secretary-general’s request to strengthen the human rights work of the organization.

Wu grew up in northern China, leaving in 1987 for the first time to study in the United States. Since graduating from Notre Dame she also has taught high school in Washington D.C., worked for a women’s organization in Geneva, taken part in the UN peacekeeping mission in Cambodia, and worked in the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

 

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