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Struggles for Rights and Justice in India

Panel Discussion with Action Village India's Partner Ekta Parishad on struggles for rights and justice in India.

Partner Ekta Parishad | Group of People

About the Event...

Join our exciting panel discussion with great panel to discuss Challenges for Rights, Social Justice and Peace for marginalised people in India

Panellists

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Ramesh Sharma

National Coordinator, Ekta Parishad

Ramesh Sharma is National Coordinator of Ekta Parishad, a mass movement for land rights of marginalized populations in India. He has collaborated with and assisted other non-violent movements in Paraguay, Argentina, Chile, Venezuela, Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, Costa Rica, Panama, Mexico, Brazil, Bangkok, and Uganda.

 

Ramesh has also delivered lectures at Cambridge University, the London School of Economics, and Oxford University as well as the British Parliamentary Committee. He is an alumnus of the ICNC Summer Institute.

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Rosnara Mohanty

State coordinator, Ekta Parishad - Odisha

Rosnara Mohanty having 25 years’ experience of working in Rural Development has been working in Kalahandi and other rural areas of Western Odisha mostly among women and forest dwelling community. The major focus of work includes building tribal women’s alliance, their development along with a sustained right over resources like land, forest, and other common property resources through their capacity building. Having expertise on documentation, training, and orientation, strengthening local governance system, addressing health and livelihood needs, working on disaster reduction and rehabilitation the major focus of work is enabling the community to lead a dignified life.

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Miloon Kathari

Independent Expert on Human Rights and Social Policy

Miloon Kothari is a renowned human rights and social policy expert with extensive teaching and training experience on the United Nations (UN) human rights system and the Universal Periodic Review (UPR).

He is the founding member of the Working Group on Human Rights in India and the UN (WGHR), one of the world’s leading national coalitions on the UPR. He is also the President of UPR Info. He has conducted training in numerous countries on the UPR with civil society organizations, UN agencies, NHRIs, governmental bodies and diplomats.

Miloon Kothari was the first UN Special Rapporteur on adequate housing. He has published widely on issues such as the UPR, housing and land rights, gender, forced evictions, globalization and its impact on human rights and the environment, civil society and trade. He regularly advises governments, UN agencies, research organizations and international and national civil society organizations on the UN human rights system, the UPR, as well as other human rights issues.

An architect by training, Miloon Kothari graduated from the Pratt Institute, Columbia University and the Maharaja Sayajirao University. He has been a Guest Professor and Visiting Scholar to numerous Universities and Institutions, including at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston.

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Sehjo Singh

Ex Programme Director, Action Aid International

I am working on an exciting project of setting up small scalable enterprises in the handloom and allied sectors in Ethiopia from April 2018.  Ethiopia is the fastest growing economy in Africa and is attracting huge investments, but the job centric paradigm needs a further push. My responsibility is to create a template of "producer owned companies" as evolved by the Industree foundation in Bangalore partnering with International Trade Centre, a UN body supporting SMEs.

I served as the Director of Programmes and Policy at Action Aid India for six years. I had the oversight of programme and policy advocacy work of 18 regional teams through 83 long term and 250 short term partnerships, many of which are community based organisations. In addition, I was also responsible for organisational policy positions and briefs, developing and rolling out local and national campaigns, communications portfolio and institutional fundraising. I joined ActionAid India in December 2011 and before that served as the Executive Director of National Centre for Advocacy Studies (NCAS) based in Pune from February 2010.

 

I have been associated with Ekta Parishad since 2000 and have been supporting other movements and groups working on land rights. From 1987 to 2009, working  as an independent documentary filmmaker I have dealt with a very wide range of developmental issues especially on land and forest rights, and won several national and international awards. 

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S. Thanaraj

State Coordinator, Ekta Parishad - Tamil Nadu

Mr.S. Thanaraj was born in a village southern most part of India. He chose law study law in order to help the poor whose voice suppressed in the society. He is compassionate towards the vulnerable, especially the Adivasi, the indigenous people.

He's married an Adivasi girl and they have two children. Along with his wife, he's been working following the Nonviolence approaches to activism. He sees the things in the perspective of the Adivasis and advocates the principles of living in harmony with nature, the way life he has learned from the Adivasis. 

For the past 11 years, he has served with Ekta Parishad as a State Coordinator, now exclusively taking up issues of Adivasis in Tamil Nadu and now living in the Annamalai hills Ranges of Pollachi in Tamil Nadu.

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