Lifelines: The Poetry of Human Rights at CSW61

A CSW61 parallel event

Event Details

  • Time

    10:30am

  • Date

    17 Mar, 2017

  • Location

    • Church Center for the United Nations, Hardin Room
    • New York City, New York

  • Contact

    WLP

Karima Bennoune

Karima Bennoune is the UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights and a professor of international law at the University of California–Davis School of Law.

Abena Busia

Abena Busia is Chair of the Department of Women's and Gender Studies and member of the Executive Board of the Center for African Studies at Rutgers University.

Tsitsi Jaji

Tsitsi Jaji was born at Nyadire Mission and raised in Harare, Zimbabwe. She is currently teaching at Duke University and has recently published her first full-length collection of poetry, Beating the Graves. 

Ladan Osman

Somalian-born poet Ladan Osman has received fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center, Cave Canem, and the Michener Center. She is a contributing editor at The Offing and lives in Chicago.

This event will feature readings by leading women poets during the 61st Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in New York City, 2017. Karima Bennoune will give opening remarks, followed by poetry presentations of Abena Busia, Tsitsi Jaji, and Ladan Osman.

Poetry can weave lifelines connecting the listener to testimonies that inspire and call for solidarity. Women’s voices resonate across divides to convey understanding and appreciation for the pain of exile, torture, violence and war, and the possibility of starting fresh, of healing, safety, and peace.

Watch: Lifelines 2017: Abena Busia and Mahnaz Afkhami

Watch: Lifelines 2017:  Karima Bennoune

Watch: Lifelines 2017: Abena Busia, Tsitsi Jaji, and Ladan Osman

Lifelines parallel event CSW 61

Resources

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Lifelines: The Poetry of Human Rights at CSW62

This event will feature readings by leading women poets during the 62nd Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women in New York City, 2018. Abena Busia, Jamila Reddy, Fatemeh Shams, and Michelle Yasmine Valladares present.

Lifelines: The Poetry of Human Rights at CSW60

Poet activists Abena Busia, Robert Gibbons, Sara Goudarzi, Darrel Holnes, Elizabeth Lara and Evie Shockley will inspire the crowd at a parallel event of the 60th Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women with poems on freedom, war, coups, conquests, family, love, memory and the craft of writing.

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