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Addressing Human Rights: From Gwangju to the UN Interview with Todd Howland Interview by Younglee Han
www.gwangjunewsgic.com
November 2020
FEATURE
We often confer respect on the basis of the job title one holds without regard to their journey to get there. Mr. Todd Howland deserves admiration for both his journey and the present work he is doing as a branch chief at OHCHR. He now holds a coveted position at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and was a critical participant of the recent World Human Rights Cities Forum (WHRCF). At WHRCF 2020, Mr. Howland was a discussant for the first plenary session of the Forum, “Human Rights Cities: Addressing Social Unrest, Learning from the Historical Past.” Mr. Howland recently took the time to share with the WHRCF team and the Gwangju News not just about the incredible work he is currently doing with the OHCHR but about the path that he took to get to where he is today.
WHRCF: First of all, thank you for taking the time to conduct this interview with us. For starters, would you mind telling us a little about yourself, including your background and where you are from? Todd Howland: I am currently the chief of the Right to Development, Sustainable Development, and Economic and Social Rights Branch of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Geneva. I have served as the OHCHR representative in Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Angola. I worked in the first OHCHR field office in post-genocide Rwanda and also had a short assignment with the OHCHR in Equatorial Guinea. I have authored over 25 scholarly articles on human rights, including in the Human Rights Quarterly. In addition, I have published extensively on human rights in newspapers and magazines, including in the Washington Post and LA Times. I was also director of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights in Washington, D.C., and I worked at El Rescate, the European Commission, and in Ethiopia for the Carter Center. I hold a juris doctorate with an emphasis in human rights law and was a visiting fellow at the Harvard Human Rights Program. I also had the good fortune to teach human rights law at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul for two semesters. WHRCF: How exactly did you become involved in the field of human rights? Was there a particular moment or a person who inspired you to follow this line of work? Todd Howland: When I was growing-up in Minnesota, USA, and was about 14 years old, one of my best friends
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died from an environmentally caused form of bone cancer. I was old enough to start doing research on this type of environmentally caused diseases. I found that so much of this type of cancer was caused by toxics put into our environment by someone who valued money over the lives of others. This personal experience helped me to see the multiple injustices around me and motivated me to get a skill set to address them. WHRCF: How did you first become involved in the UN human rights system? Can you tell us about that experience? It would seem like your posting overlapped with the peak of the Rwandan genocide, right? Todd Howland: I arrived in Rwanda at the end of the genocide as part of the OHCHR’s first field operation. I had just completed an assignment for the OHCHR in Equatorial Guinea and was giving the report of my work in Geneva, when I was asked if I spoke French and whether I had an interest in joining their first field operation. I still remember hitchhiking from the airport in Kigali to the office, as not only had there been a genocide but also significant infrastructural damage, and our office was just getting off the ground and did not even have vehicles to spare. I was put in charge of the work to help rebuild the institutions needed to uphold human rights. We did a good deal of work related to transitional justice, prisons, and policing, as well civil society. It was both a traumatic and rewarding experience to contribute at that moment in time. WHRCF: Tell us a little about your experience living and teaching in Korea. What are some of your most vivid
10/28/2020 10:49:00 AM
