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Projects
We also participate in major U.N. Conferences, such as the 4th World Conference on Women and the Habitat Conference. We take special pride in having helped train Tibetans to be their own best advocates.
Since 1998, we have conducted our own fact-finding missions in order to go behind the reports of religious persecution and political imprisonment and learn what life is like for most Tibetans under Chinese rule. Using teams of lawyers and psychologists, we have interviewed Tibetan refugees, prepared reports, and brought the information to the U.N., governments, non-governmental organizations, and to the public. These special missions are:
Legal Materials on Tibet: - Tibet Justice Center publishes and updates Legal Materials on Tibet, a one-stop resource for treaties, historical documents, and United Nations and government resolutions concerning Tibet.
Current IUCN Activities
in 2004 Tibet Justice Center's Asylum and Immigration
Project manages a clearinghouse of information and materials for Tibetans
and attorneys representing Tibetans in asylum matters. The Project maintains
a list of agencies through which Tibetans seeking asylum can obtain legal
assistance and possibly secure low cost or pro bono legal representation.
The Project also provides sample asylum briefs, client affidavits and
specialized information regarding the conditions for Tibetans in Tibet,
Nepal and India to attorneys representing Tibetans.
Assisting the Tibetan Government in Exile to Develop Democratic Institutions:
In 1998, at the request of the TGIE, we began a multi-year training program
of Tibetan legislative counsel. This program is now complete and new legislative
counsel began serving the TGIE in the summer of 2003. In 1998, we sponsored
a visit to the U.S. by the Chief Justice of the Tibetan Judiciary to familiarize
both Tibetans and American lawyers and jurists on how aspects of the Anglo-American
system might contribute positively to the administration of civil and
criminal justice in Tibetan institutions. In 1997, at the request of the
TGIE, we assisted in rewriting the Tibetan Constitution for internal consistency
and consistency with Indian law (the host country of the Tibetan government).
Models for Self-Governance: In late 2004, we will complete
the first-ever study of 35 existing models around the world in which a
people has gained some form of self-governance within the framework of
a state. This study, Forms of Autonomy, will be published in early 2005.
The study will provide a valuable resource for peoples and governments
throughout the world who are interested in resolving conflicts nonviolently
through negotiated autonomy arrangements.
I. HUMAN RIGHTS
II. ENVIRONMENT & DEVELOPMENT
III. ASYLUM AND IMMIGRATION
IV. DEMOCRACY BUILDING
I. HUMAN RIGHTS
Tibet Justice Center has provided key support to the advocacy
of the Government-in-Exile before the United Nations and individual governments,
and the work of Tibet support groups around the world. We helped establish
the Tibet Bureau in Geneva, the main base for the Tibetans' U.N. work,
and today we help prepare the Government-in-Exile's major position papers
on human rights issues for submission to U.N. bodies. These have recently
included briefs on Women's Rights, Torture, and Racism. We also regularly
draft shorter "interventions" for the Commission on Human Rights and for
other U.N. bodies. You can access these papers through our Reports
section.
Refugees in Nepal - In 2001, a team of Tibet Justice
Center investigators interviewed Tibetans and Nepalese officials throughout
Nepal in order to determine how Tibetan refugees are being treated when
they arrive in Nepal, and after they settle in one of the refugee communities
in Nepal. With this information, we will work with Nepalese, U.N. and
Tibetan Government-in-Exile officials, as well as with other concerned
governments, to improve the treatment of newly arrived Tibetan refugees
in Nepal. The information will also help support the applications of Tibetans
seeking political asylum in the United States.
Tibetan Children's Rights - In November 1999, Tibet
Justice Center undertook a fact-finding mission to investigate how Tibetan
children are treated in detention, what kind of education they receive,
and what level of nutrition and healthcare they can expect. The resulting
report, "A Generation in Peril:
The Lives of Tibetan Children Under Chinese Rule", was released in
March 2001 and is currently available online and in hardcopy through our
office. We will also be presenting a separate report to the United Nations
Committee on the Rights of the Child.
Tibetan Women's Rights - In August 1998, Tibet
Justice Center documented the ways in which Chinese rule in Tibet effects
women, with particular attention to family planning measures, treatment
in detention, education, and discrimination in employment and healthcare.
We submitted a report to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination
of Discrimination Against Women in January 1999. CEDAW subsequently adopted
some of Tibet Justice Center's recommendations. Tibet Justice Center networks
with other women's rights organizations, and sponsors Tibetan delegations
to relevant international forums to promote Tibetan women's rights. Our
report, Violence and Discrimination
Against Tibetan Women is available online and in hardcopy through
our office.
Sovereignty and Self-Determination: - In 1998, Tibet
Justice Center published a unique legal brief, Tibet's
Sovereignty and the Tibetan People's Right to Self-Determination.
This paper explains why Tibet legally was independent prior to the Chinese
occupation. It also shows why the Tibetan people are entitled now to exercise
their legal right to self-determination — that is, to decide their
own political, social, cultural and economic future — regardless
of Tibet's historical status.
II. ENVIRONMENT & DEVELOPMENT
Since the Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1949, the Tibetan
Plateau has endured widespread environmental degradation. While we acknowledge
that the Chinese government has instituted several important environmental
protection measures, we remain extremely concerned about the Chinese governments
inattention to the environmental and development concerns of the Tibetan
people. Not only has Tibet’s environment been seriously damaged
since the Chinese occupation, but the environmental damage has occurred
in tandem with human rights abuses, the stripping of political and cultural
rights, and the overall marginalization of the Tibetan people within their
own homeland.
Tibet Justice Center is working to promote sustainable development and
protection of Tibet's environment. Our current focus is protecting Tibet's
watersheds -- watersheds that give rise to ten of Asia's major river systems
and affect over one billion people in the region, and on training Tibetans
in environmental policy and advocacy.
Tibet Justice Center has been active in Tibetan environmental
issues for more than 10 years, since we joined The World Conservation
Union (formerly International Union for the Conservation of Nature and
Natural Resources-- IUCN) in 1990. Our organization remains the sole voice
for Tibetan environmental concerns among more than 900 governmental and
non-governmental IUCN members.
This project description covers the history of the Center's
work at the IUCN, why we need to focus on Tibet's environment, and our
current work training young Tibetan advocates and working directly with
Chinese environmental activists.
TRIN-GYI-PHO-NYA:
Tibet's Environment & Development Digest
Written and compiled by Tashi Tsering and his team of Tibetan interns,
the TRIN-GYI-PHO-NYA newsletter takes an in-depth look at the dangers
that threaten Tibet's environment as well as current efforts by Chinese
and Tibetan environmental activists to preserve Tibetan ecosystems and
develop them sustainably.
Reports &
Publications
Read our reports on issues including population transfer, sustainable
management of Tibet's rivers, daming and hydro-power, and more.
III. Asylum & Immigration
Tibet Justice Center can provide, whenever possible,
expert
affidavits
on country conditions in Tibet and conditions for Tibetan refugees in
India or Nepal for individual asylum cases.
Board Member Dennis Cusack giving a training
on issues relating to Tibetan asylees to Asylum
Officers in the U.S. Immigration Service.
Asylum and Immigration Project Home
Page
Go here to access a host of resources on the asylum
process, sample briefs for Tibetan asylum seekers, our policy on expert
work, and other resources.
IV. DEMOCRACY BUILDING
Self-Governance Education: As an outgrowth
of preparing Forms of Autonomy, the TGIE has asked us to educate the Tibetan
exile communities about issues of self-governance and self-determination.
In 2000, we helped train Tibetan educators and settlement officers to
educate their communities and generate discussion about these issues.
A second round of training with Tibetan Parliamentarians, settlement officers,
students and NGO leaders took place in 2002.
Monks at an autonomy and self-
determination training, Dharmasala,
India, 2002
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