|
Courage in the Face of Crisis:
HIV/AIDS, Harm Reduction, and Human Rights in Russia
September 15, 2005
Biographies of Speakers
Mark von Hagen (moderator) is the Boris Bakhmeteff Professor of Russian and East European Studies and teaches Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian history at Columbia University. He is the author of Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship: The Red Army and the Soviet Socialist State, 1917-1930; co-editor of Kazan, Moscow, St. Petersburg: Multiple Faces of the Russian Empire; co-editor of After Empire: Multiethnic Societies and Nation-Building: The Soviet Union and the Russian, Ottoman and Habsburg Empire; co-editor of Culture, Nation, Identity: the Ukrainian-Russian Encounter (1600-1945); and co-editor of the forthcoming Geographies of Empire: Ruling Russia, 1700-1930. Von Hagen has also taught at Stanford University, Yale University, the Free University of Berlin, and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris). He served as associate director and then director of Columbia University's Harriman Institute (1989-2001), the nation's oldest university-based research and teaching center on the states and societies of post-Soviet Eurasia. He is on the editorial board of Ab Imperio and Kritika. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Human Rights Watch Europe and Central Asia Steering Committee. In August 2002 von Hagen was elected President of the International Association of Ukrainian Studies at the Fifth Congress in Chernivtsi, Ukraine.
Kasia Malinowska-Sempruch (panelist) is the director of the International Harm Reduction Development program (IHRD) at the Open Society Institute (OSI). Based in New York, IHRD has pioneered technical and financial support for more than 200 harm reduction projects across 23 countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Currently IHRD focuses on policy advocacy around issues critical to the health and human rights of drug users, including the reform of repressive drug policies that inadvertently fuel the spread of HIV, the availability of substitution treatment, and the expansion of harm reduction services. In addition to her work with IHRD, Malinowska-Sempruch is a member of the Technical Review Panel of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and is Vice Chair of the board of the International Council of AIDS Service Organizations (ICASO). She serves on the World Health Organization's Strategic and Technical Advisory Committee on HIV/AIDS. She has been a member of the UN Millennium Project's Task Force on HIV/AIDS, TB, Malaria, and Access to Essential Medicines, as well as the UN Reference Group on HIV/AIDS Prevention and Care Among Injecting Drug Users. She has also developed donor consortia to direct funds to address the health of drug users and collaborates actively with UNAIDS and UNDP. She is a member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Drug Policy. Before joining the Open Society Institute, Malinowska-Sempruch worked with the UNDP's HIV and Development Program in both New York City and her native Poland. She co-authored Poland's first National AIDS Program and designed training courses for nurses, physicians, social workers, teachers, local policy makers, prison personnel and psychologists. She received her Masters of Social Work from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992 and is now a doctoral student at Columbia University's School of Public Health.
Aleksandr (Sasha) Tsekanovich (panelist and special guest) is the director general of Humanitarian Action, a leading HIV/AIDS organization in Saint Petersburg Russia and the international recipient of the 2005 Award for Action on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights, sponsored by the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network and Human Rights Watch. Humanitarian Action grew out of the pioneering work of the French nongovernmental organization Médecins du Monde in providing HIV prevention services to marginalized populations, and was registered as an independent organization in 2001. The organization operates a mobile unit providing syringe exchange, HIV and hepatitis testing and counseling, medical and psychological consultation and care, and condoms to those at risk of HIV in Saint Petersburg. It has reached out to highly marginalized populations such as street children and street-based sex workers, and has maintained the highest standards of medical care in a policy environment that is often hostile to HIV prevention. Humanitarian Action has distinguished itself by training Russian police officers and prison medical officials on the basics on HIV/AIDS and harm reduction, and provides an essential advocacy voice on behalf of people living with and at risk of HIV/AIDS in Russia.
Rachel Denber (panelist) is the deputy director of the Europe and Central Asia Division of Human Rights Watch. She earned a bachelor's degree from Rutgers University in international relations and a master's degree in political science from Columbia University, where she studied at the Harriman Institute. She specializes in countries of the former Soviet Union, and speaks fluent Russian and French. Upon joining Human Rights Watch in 1991 as a research associate she traveled on research and advocacy missions and advocacy in Russia, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Estonia, Ukraine and Tajikistan. She has written and edited reports on human rights throughout the region, authored and co-authored reports on a wide range of issues throughout the region. Denber was the head of Human Rights Watch's Moscow office from 1992-1997. In July 1997 she returned to Human Rights Watch's New York office to become deputy director of the Europe and Central Asia Division. She continues to travel extensively in the former Soviet Union.
For more information, please email Elizabeth
Williams or call 212.327.9360.
|
 |
 |
|
The views represented on the ASIP website are not necessarily
those of Asia Society or its funders.
|
|
|
|
|
|
