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On March 10–14, 2019, I worked with the dedicated team of The Advocates for Human Rights and directly engaged in lobbying and advocacy activities at the UN level regarding the Universal Periodic Review along with colleagues from Ethiopia, Cote D’Ivoire and Russia. Prior to the Geneva visit in 2018, The Advocates and HRDC prepared the Albania Stakeholder Report for the United Nations UPR called Domestic Violence Situation in Albania. During this time, I carried out approximately 25 meetings with Human Rights Council members where I shared information about the general state of women’s rights and domestic violence in Albania. This UN Advocacy experience was indeed successful as I was able to meaningfully engage over 25 states to advocate recommendations for Albania during its upcoming UPR review in May 2019.

The theme for International Women’s Day 2019 is Think Equal, Build Smart, Innovate for Change. According to UN Women, this theme challenges us to think about how we can “advance gender equality and the empowerment of women

The second training, in Chisinau, Moldova, led by Jennifer Prestholdt, Theresa Dykoschak, and Amy Bergquist, addressed using UN mechanisms to defend women’s rights. The conference, “Preventing Domestic Violence through Effective Collaboration: A New Stage of Development of Crisis Centers,” was organized by OSCE, UN Women, UNFPA, and the Union of Crisis Centers in Kazakhstan and aimed at strengthening the work of the crisis centers and raising awareness on preventing domestic violence. * Robin Phillips and Rosalyn Park trained 25 lawyers from 15 countries for the seventh round of the Women’s Human Rights Training Institute (WHRTI) in Sofia, Bulgaria. By: Rosalyn Park, director of the Women’s Human Rights Program at The Advocates for Human Rights.

…it seems that the concept of freedom no longer has a consensus understanding among the American people. What’s more, we have lost our ability to engage in debate, a cornerstone of a healthy democracy