The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights is set to hold hearings at the University of Colorado this week, the first time the hearings have been held in the U.S. outside of Washington, D.C.
The University of Colorado Law School will host the hearings, which will cover a broad range of issues and human rights cases. The hearings will address the use of fracking in the Americas; reports of killings, disappearances and multiple forms of discrimination against indigenous communities and indigenous women in Alaska; the identification of remains of migrants who disappeared along the U.S. border; and voting rights for Puerto Ricans — as well as a host of issues in other countries in the hemisphere.
“This is an extraordinary opportunity for the University of Colorado at Boulder and the Boulder community more generally,” law school Dean S. James Anaya said. “It’s extraordinary to have hearings of this type outside of not just the headquarters of the Inter-American Commission, but outside of the major population centers of any country in the world.”
The commission, headquartered in Washington, D.C., “holds several sessions a year, an opportunity that brings together hundreds of human rights defenders from the region, as well as state delegations constituted by high-level human rights officials, academics, among others,” according to a commission news release.
Anaya said that in recent years, commission officials have begun scheduling sessions outside the U.S., and now in Boulder, as a broader effort of outreach and education about the work they do and the issues they address. After discussions, he formally invited them to hold the hearings in Boulder.
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