Human rights week aims to unify efforts

A group of Penn students will soon be going hungry, and not just because their meal plans ran out.

They will be fasting this weekend as part of a Students for International Social Work campaign to raise money for starving children around the world.

The event is one of many taking place on campus as part of Witness Week, Penn's first annual human-rights week.

While fasting, members plan to make a goal of 29,000 paper cranes, symbolizing the 29,000 children that die each day from hunger according to organizers.

"It is an important cause and [a] violation of human rights because there is so much food around the world ... but it's not distributed evenly," first-year School of Social Policy and Practice student and SISW secretary Weihui Wang said.

The series of events was organized by students in several organizations dedicated to human-rights issues, including Liberation in North Korea, Students Taking Action Now: Darfur, Amnesty International, Penn Israel Coalition, Mex@Penn and SISW.

Speakers, films, performances and other events that focus on human-rights issues around the world will be held through Friday.

College sophomore and Liberation in North Korea board member Shira Bender helped get Witness Week off the ground.

According to Bender, the main goal of the week is to bring awareness of global issues to students at Penn.

"We eventually want awareness to lead to action," Bender said. But even if students don't take action, knowledge about the issues is still spreading, she added.

Witness Week is also intended to combine the efforts of various human-rights groups at Penn.

It will be "one week where they are all organized together and they have one common goal" instead of spreading their events throughout the year, Engineering junior and STAND head Anna Mayergoyz said.

Events this week included a speech from Penn Law professor Harry Reicher, who spoke about human rights law.

"He was very well informed," Engineering junior Ben Weinberg said about Reicher's speech. "He knows lots ... about the genocide going on in Darfur and the legal basis for trying war criminals."

Tonight, guest speaker Simon Deng will speak about his experience in Sudan escaping slavery.

Students will also have the opportunity to participate in part of the Sudan Freedom Walk from Temple University to City Hall, Independence Hall and, finally, to Penn. The entire walk started in New York and will end in Washington D.C.

The week will end on Friday with a key note speaker: Jotaka Eaddy of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

"As advanced as [the U.S. is] ... we're also not perfect" when it comes to human rights, Bender said.

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