RFK Human Rights Award Laureate Abel Barrera Hernández To Speak At Notre Dame

Abel Barrera Hernández, recipient of the 2010 RFK Human Rights Award, will speak on the issue of defending human rights in Mexico this Tuesday, March 1, at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana.

The lecture is the first of a new annual lecture series and marks the launch of a broad partnership between the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights and the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. The two organizations have collaborated on previous projects, including a ground-breaking report, issued in 2010, on discrimination in India against so-called untouchables.

The lecture, “Defending the Rights of Indigenous and Peasant Peoples in Guerrero, Mexico,” will be held on March 1, at 4 p.m., at C-103 Hesburgh Center, University of Notre Dame.

The event is free and open to the public.

The Kroc Institute is a leading center for the study of the root causes of violent conflict and strategies for sustainable peace.  The new partnership brings together the expertise of the Kroc Institute with the innovative advocacy of the RFK Center and its Human Rights Award Laureates around the world.

Abel Barrera is the founder and Director of the Tlachinollan Human Rights Center, based in Tlapa de Comonfort, Guerrero.  For approximately 17 years, Abel and his colleagues at Tlachinollan have worked in the Montaña, Costa Chica, Costa Grande, Acapulco, and Centro regions of Guerrero state, accompanying the Naua, Na’Savi (Mixteco), Me’phaa (Tlapaneco), Amuzgo, and mestizo peoples in their struggles for the full respect of their human rights.

Over the last five years, Tlachinollan has worked in particular to condemn excessive militarization and violence in Guerrero.  Abel and his colleagues work under constant threat for reporting human rights abuses, which have included forced disappearances, rape, arbitrary detentions, intimidation, dispossession of lands and illegal interrogations of community members.  Since April 9, 2009, 107 human rights defenders from the state of Guerrero, including every member of Tlachinollan and the indigenous organizations they partner with, have provisional measures from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

In 2010, Abel Barrera received the 27th annual Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award for his determined efforts to end human rights abuses committed against indigenous and peasant communities in southern Mexico.

To learn more:
Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies