Albany Law School

The Amnesty International Chapter of Albany Law School held a symposium entitled "Lost Childhood: Child Soldiers, Trafficked Children, and Child Rights" on Friday, February 1.

Symposium panelists addressed a packed auditorium of students about the legal and policy issues surrounding child soldiers and child victims of trafficking, including cases involving child soldiers that have come before the International Criminal Court (ICC), the perpetrator bar to asylum-seeking, and the international trade in child labor and international rights.

The Albany Times Union featured a story about the symposium on February 2, 2008. 

Symposium topics included:

• Resettlement of formerly abducted children in Northern Uganda;
• Learning to rehabilitate sexually enslaved/trafficked children by examining strategies for childhood survivors of family violence and sexual abuse in the U.S;
• The withholding of international rights from American children;
• On the backs of our children: The international trade in child labor; and
• Commercial sexual exploitation of children of Cambodian families that came to the U.S. following the Khmer Rouge genocide.

Panelists included:

• Joanne Corbin, Ph.D., associate professor, chair research sequence, Smith College School for Social Work
• Anna Makanju, associate, Cleary Gottlieb Steen and Hamilton, LLP; former clerk, International Criminal Court (ICC)
• Pantea Javidan, Esq., attorney and child rights advocate
• Alec Wargo, program officer, Office of the Special Representative for Secretary General for Children and Armed Conflict, United Nations
• Isaac Flattau, former associate of the legal office of the ICC
• Prof. Melissa Breger, associate clinical professor of law; director of the Family Violence Litigation Clinic, Albany Law School
• Prof. Donna Young, professor of law, Albany Law School
• Prof. Maria Grahn-Farley, associate professor of law, Albany Law School
• Prof. Christian Sundquist, assistant professor of law, Albany Law School

The symposium was hosted by the Amnesty International Chapter of Albany Law School in conjunction with Diversity Office and the Faculty Diversity Committee of Albany Law School, the Special Initiative Fund of Amnesty International USA and the Program for International Justice and Accountability of Amnesty International USA.