Amelia Parker: Executive Director
E-Mail: amelia(at)pbiusa.org
Amelia Parker has worked in the field of human rights for over 20 years, working both at home and abroad. In 2000, she traveled to Ghana to work for the Legal Resources Centre, where she researched the right to work of Sierra Leonean refugees, as well as the human rights implication of water privatization in Ghana. Also during the early part of the 2000s, she served as a Legislative Coordinator for Amnesty International - USA. In 2006, she joined the staff of the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in Washington, DC as program coordinator where she designed and implemented human rights programming such as the Genocide Teaching Project, which trained law students to teach the lessons of genocide in area high schools. Most recently, her focus has been on the domestic implementation of human rights laws in the U.S. In 2007, she published an article concerning racial inequalities in the U.S. public education system and U.S. non-compliance with international treaty norms, which led to her being a contributing author to the U.S. Human Rights Network’s shadow report on U.S. compliance to the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD). Amelia served as executive director of a community organizing non-profit in Tennessee called Statewide Organizing for Community eMpowerment (SOCM) from 2009-2013 before joining the staff at PBI-USA in 2014 as Executive Director. In addition to working for PBI-USA, Amelia also serves on the Knoxville (TN) City Council as the at-large seat C representative.
Pat Davis: U.S. Advocacy Director
E-Mail: Pat.Davis@peacebrigades.org
Pat Davis is a writer and human rights activist. She began working in human rights in 1992, when she joined the staff of the Guatemala Human Rights Commission as Communications Director, a position she held for five years. She left to co-author a book with her colleague Dianna Ortiz, The Blindfold’s Eyes: My Journey from Torture to Truth. Published in 2002, the book recounts Ortiz’s experiences in Guatemala and her struggle for justice. Pat returned as executive director of the Guatemala Human Rights Commission from 2003—2005. As director, she led the organization’s advocacy work, developed campaigns, led delegations to Guatemala, testified as an expert witness in political asylum cases, and produced regular human rights reports and analyses. More recently, she turned to dramatic writing for advocacy, penning a stage play based on the life of Mexican human rights activist Digna Ochoa, which was produced by a new professional theater company, the Digna Theater, in Tucson, Arizona. She has published articles on foreign policy in The Nation, Foreign Policy in Focus, Counterpunch, and Common Dreams. Her work has also been published by the North American Congress on Latin America, the Copenhagen Initiative for Central America and Mexico, and the Center for International Policy.
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