Media Releases

Panel discussion on technology, human rights, & international security in the 21st century

February 1, 2016

Toron­to, ON — On Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 2, at the Munk School of Glob­al Affairs, please join us for a pan­el dis­cus­sion on the inter­sec­tion between dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy, human rights and inter­na­tion­al secu­ri­ty in the 21st cen­tu­ry, fea­tur­ing Ramzi Jaber, Tim­o­thy Quinn, Jake Hirsch Allen, and Dr. Tay­lor Owen. The round­table will take place from 7:00PM to 9:00PM in the Music Room of the Hart House Build­ing, at 7 Hart House Cir­cle.

Advance­ment in dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy has brought about new chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties for the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty and our col­lec­tive quest for peace and secu­ri­ty, espe­cial­ly in the face of the ris­ing place of non-state actors. This pan­el will bring togeth­er a pan­el of experts on the relat­ed top­ics. There will be an oppor­tu­ni­ty for Q/A with the audi­ence fol­low­ing the pre­sen­ta­tions.

Tick­ets are avail­able on a first-come, first-served basis and are free of charge. To reg­is­ter, please access our Eventbrite page at https://ccr2ppaneldiscussion.eventbrite.ca.

This event is co-spon­sored by the Inter­na­tion­al Rela­tions Soci­ety at U of T, Cana­di­an-Arab Insti­tute, Hart House Debates Com­mit­tee, and CIC’s OpenCanada.org.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Ramzi Jaber
Ramzi is the co-founder of Visu­al­iz­ing Impact, an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary orga­ni­za­tion that spe­cial­izesin data visu­al­iza­tion, tech­nol­o­gy and data jour­nal­ism cre­at­ing visu­al sto­ries on social issues. Jaber is also co-founder of onlinecensorship.org (OC), an award-win­ning space where com­mu­ni­ties crowd­source instances of cen­sor­ship enact­ed by pri­vate online plat­forms. Jaber’s work has been fea­tured in var­i­ous inter­na­tion­al­ly-acclaimed pub­li­ca­tions, and he has giv­en talks at Google Moun­tain view and a TEDx Talk at TEDx­Sum­mit in Doha. Dur­ing the Spring of 2012 Jaber was a fel­low at Stan­ford University’s Cen­ter for Democ­ra­cy, Devel­op­ment, and the Rule of Law as a Social Entre­pre­neur-in-Res­i­dence. Jaber has also just been recent­ly select­ed as an Ashoka Fel­low and as a 2016 Ford- Mozil­la Open Web Fel­low.

Tim­o­thy Quinn
Tim­o­thy Quinn is Direc­tor of Tech­nol­o­gy with The Sen­tinel Project, a Cana­di­an NGO which endeav­ours to mit­i­gate the risk of mass atroc­i­ties through ear­ly warn­ing inter­ven­tion and com­mu­ni­ty peace-build­ing, and is the cre­ator of the organization’s Hate­base and WikiRu­mours soft­ware. Quinn’s work for The Sen­tinel Project has been pro­filed in var­i­ous pub­li­ca­tions. Quinn is an accom­plished author and instruc­tor who has taught at NYU and CUNY, and he cur­rent­ly con­tributes his time as a Lead Advi­sor (Philip­pines) with the Cana­di­an Exec­u­tive Ser­vice Orga­ni­za­tion and as a Direc­tor with Kenya’s Lewa Wildlife Con­ser­va­to­ry.

Jake Hirsch-Allen
Jake Hirsch-Allen is a for­mer start­up and intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty lawyer who is cur­rent­ly a part­ner at Func­tion­al Imper­a­tive, a dig­i­tal inno­va­tion and soft­ware devel­op­ment com­pa­ny. Hirsch-Allen also recent­ly found­ed Light­house Labs. In addi­tion, he is a senior man­ag­er at Incen­tives for Glob­al Health, the non-prof­it propos­ing the Health Impact Fund. He also works part-time as Direc­tor of Busi­ness Devel­op­ment for the Mul­ti­plic­i­ty Accel­er­a­tor and Cobalt Coun­sel, and advis­es a num­ber of high-tech star­tups. Aside from his his cur­rent posi­tions, Hirsch-Allen has sig­nif­i­cant expe­ri­ence in the pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tors in Cana­da and abroad includ­ing clerk­ing for the Supreme Court of Israel, intern­ing at Human Rights Watch and on Radovan Karadz­ic and Ieng Thirith’s defense teams at the Inter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Tri­bunal for the for­mer Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the Extra­or­di­nary Cham­bers in the Courts of Cam­bo­dia (ECCC).

Dr. Tay­lor Owen
Tay­lor Owen is Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor of Dig­i­tal Media and Glob­al Affairs at the Uni­ver­si­ty of British Colum­bia, a Senior Fel­low at the Colum­bia Jour­nal­ism School and the founder and Edi­tor of OpenCanada.org. He was pre­vi­ous­ly the Research Direc­tor of the Tow Cen­ter for Dig­i­tal Jour­nal­ism at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, and has held research posi­tions at Yale Uni­ver­si­ty, The Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics and The Inter­na­tion­al Peace Research Insti­tute, Oslo where his work focus­es on the inter­sec­tion between infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy and inter­na­tion­al affairs. His Doc­tor­ate is from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford where he was a Trudeau Schol­ar. He has held Bant­i­ng Post­doc­tor­al and Action Cana­da Fel­low­ships and cur­rent­ly serves on the Board of Direc­tors of the Cen­ter for Inter­na­tion­al Gov­er­nance Inno­va­tion (CIGI). Dr. Owen is also an author of sev­er­al notable books.

ABOUT RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT
The Respon­si­bil­i­ty to Pro­tect, also referred to as RtoP or R2P, is an inter­na­tion­al prin­ci­ple coined in 2001 under the lead­er­ship of the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment and lat­er adopt­ed at the 2005 World Sum­mit by 150 heads of gov­ern­ment. R2P states that when sov­er­eign states are unable or unwill­ing to ful­fill their respon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­tect their own pop­u­la­tions from mass atroc­i­ties such as geno­cide, eth­nic cleans­ing, crimes against human­i­ty and war crimes, the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty has the respon­si­bil­i­ty to do so.

ABOUT THE HOST
The Cana­di­an Cen­tre for R2P, based at Munk School of Glob­al Affairs, Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, is a lead­ing Cana­di­an, non-par­ti­san and non-prof­it research orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cat­ed to schol­ar­ly engage­ment and polit­i­cal imple­men­ta­tion of the R2P prin­ci­ple. The CCR2P is run­ning a cam­paign this year on “R2P at Cross­roads: Ten Years since the 2005 World Sum­mit.” (www.ccr2p.org)

For media inquiries, please con­tact:

Tina Park
Exec­u­tive Direc­tor and Co-Founder
Cana­di­an Cen­tre for the Respon­si­bil­i­ty to Pro­tect
www.ccr2p.org | 1–416-828‑2361| executive.director@ccr2p.org

Kelsey Wise­man
Co-Direc­tor of Media Rela­tions
Cana­di­an Cen­tre for the Respon­si­bil­i­ty to Pro­tect
www.ccr2p.org | 1–514-519‑2547| communications@ccr2p.org