The University of New Mexico

Amnesty Int’l Hosts Human Rights Conference and Training at UNM

October 1, 2012 | By Carolyn Gonzales

Amnesty Inter­na­tional hosts the third annual “Change Our World” human rights train­ing and con­fer­ence Fri­day, Oct. 5 — Sun­day, Oct. 7 at the Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico Stu­dent Union Build­ing. Hosted by the UNM Amnesty Inter­na­tional chap­ter, the con­fer­ence brings human rights activists and sup­port­ers from the South­west together for an immi­grants’ rights rally, work­shops and keynote speakers.

“Change Our World” presents two promi­nent guest speak­ers, Palden Gyatso and Juan Melen­dez. Gyatso is a for­mer Tibetan pris­oner of con­science who spent 33 years in a Chi­nese prison; and Juan Melen­dez is a death row exoneree who spent 18 years on death row in Florida for a crime he did not commit.

The Fri­day con­fer­ence kick off fea­tures a leg­isla­tive action blitz from 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. as well as an immi­grants’ rally from 5 — 6:30 p.m. Saturday’s day-long event fea­tures the two keynote speak­ers, human rights work­shops, as well as a net­work­ing event for Young Pro­fes­sions of Amnesty Inter­na­tional. The work­shops include lob­by­ing and event plan­ning skills and sub­ject mat­ter exper­tise on women’s rights, envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice, immi­gra­tion and human rights as they per­tain to the 2012 elec­tion. Sun­day includes lead­er­ship devel­op­ment train­ing for all Amnesty Inter­na­tional chapters.

Con­fer­ence reg­is­tra­tion is required and the fee is on a slid­ing scale. Reg­is­tra­tion is online at Change Our World.

Amnesty Inter­na­tional is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning grass­roots activist orga­ni­za­tion with more than 3 mil­lion sup­port­ers, activists and vol­un­teers in more than 150 coun­tries cam­paign­ing for human rights world­wide. The orga­ni­za­tion inves­ti­gates and exposes abuses, edu­cates and mobi­lizes the pub­lic, and works to pro­tect peo­ple wher­ever jus­tice, free­dom, truth and dig­nity are denied.

For more infor­ma­tion, con­tact: Alanna Offield, or call 505–795-2881; or Sara Schmidt, or call 415–288-1865.

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