Event Date: March 12, 2024 - 2:30pm to 4:00pm
Location: FSS 4007, 120 University Private, University of Ottawa

Presented by CIPS, the Human Rights Research and Education Centre (HRREC), the Canada Tibet Committee and the U.S. Embassy in Canada

The seminar seeks to illuminate the aggressive assimilation policies of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and their impact on Tibetan language, culture, and religion, focusing on the forced separation of Tibetan children into residential schools, the PRC’s interference in the succession of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and the broader implications of these practices on the national identity of Tibetans. Additionally, it aims to elevate the discourse on Tibetan issues, leveraging the robust collaboration between Canada and the United States. This collaborative endeavor acknowledges and utilizes the strong partnership between the two nations across various fronts, seeking to foster a comprehensive understanding and a unified international approach to addressing these critical human rights issues in Tibet.

Keynote speaker:

Uzra Zeya – Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy and Human Rights; and US Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues

Uzra Zeya was Senate-confirmed and sworn in as Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights on July 14, 2021. In this role, she leads global diplomatic efforts to strengthen democracy, advance universal human rights, support refugees and humanitarian relief, promote rule of law and counternarcotics cooperation, fight corruption and intolerance, prevent armed conflict, and eliminate human trafficking. On December 20, 2021, Secretary Blinken announced her designation to serve concurrently as the U.S. Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues, for which she leads U.S. efforts to support the human rights and meet the humanitarian needs of the Tibetan people and preserve their unique cultural, religious, and linguistic identity. Under Secretary Zeya brings to these roles over three decades of diplomatic and leadership acumen at the intersection of international peace, security, and human rights. From 2019 to 2021, she served as president and CEO of the Alliance for Peacebuilding, a non-partisan global network of more than 130 organizations working in more than 180 countries to end conflict by peaceful means. During her 27-year Foreign Service career, Zeya served as deputy chief of mission and chargé d’affaires in Paris; acting assistant secretary and principal deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor; chief of staff to the deputy secretary of state; political minister-counselor in New Delhi; and deputy executive secretary to Secretaries of State Rice and Clinton. She also served in Syria, Egypt, Oman, Jamaica, and in various policy roles at the Department of State. Zeya speaks Arabic, French and Spanish. Under Secretary Zeya co-authored a 2021 Council on Foreign Relations report on Revitalizing the State Department and American Diplomacy. She is a current commissioner of the Congressional-Executive Committee on China and an ex-officio member of the U.S. Institute of Peace Board of Directors. She has served on the Advisory Board for the Georgetown University Institute for the Study of Diplomacy and several non-profit boards focused on women’s empowerment, peacebuilding, and digital freedom. She also served previously as a Practitioner in Residence at Georgetown University’s Master of Science in Foreign Service program, where she taught coursework on U.S.-European relations. She is a graduate of Georgetown University and the recipient of several State Department Superior Honor and Senior Performance awards, the Presidential Rank Award, the French Legion d’Honneur, and the Cross of Commander of the Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas.

Panelists:

Dr. Namgyal Choedup – Representative of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Office of Tibet in North America

Born and raised in a Tibetan refugee settlement in India, Dr. Choedup received his basic schooling and college education in India. From 1995 to 1998, he served as a planning officer in the then Planning Commission. In 1998, he was awarded a two-year scholarship to pursue higher studies in the USA and earned a master’s degree in sustainable international development from Brandeis University. From 2002 to 2005, Dr. Choedup served in the Department of Information and International Relations (DIIR) as a researcher on Tibet’s environment and development issues and as the Director of Environment and Development Desk. In the summer of 2002, Dr. Choedup visited Tibet to explore the possibilities of future research and development projects inside Tibet. In 2007, he joined the PhD program in anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis to pursue his goal of conducting research inside Tibet. As part of his graduate training, Dr. Choedup took an introductory Chinese language course and wrote a PhD dissertation thesis proposal on China’s development model in Tibet. However, the Spring Protests of 2008 led to the lockdown of the Tibetan areas, making research inside Tibet unfeasible. Dr. Choedup had to shift his research focus and conducted 18 months of dissertation fieldwork in India. He successfully defended his dissertation thesis titled “From Tibetan Refugees to Transmigrants: Negotiating Cultural Identity and Economic Mobility through Migration” in 2015. He has been involved in collaborative research in Nepal and India, which led to the successful publication of one co-authored book and several journal articles on contemporary Tibetan societies in India and Nepal. In addition to academic research, Dr. Choedup also worked as a freelance consultant, interpreter, and translator for different organizations involved in immigration, legal, health, and news services. Dr. Choedup presented his academic works at different international conferences and seminars including the American Anthropological Association, Center for Study of Citizenship, Association of Nepal and Himalayan Studies, The Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, and International Association for Tibetan Studies. In December 2021, he took over the role of the Representative of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Central Tibetan Administration to North America, working from the Office of Tibet based in Washington DC.

Dr. Tashi Rabgey – Research Professor of International Affairs at the Elliott School

Tashi Rabgey is Research Professor of International Affairs at the Elliott School where she directs the Research Initiative on Multination States (RIMS) and the Tibet Governance Lab. Rabgey’s primary research focuses on territorial politics, state asymmetry and problems of scale in the People’s Republic of China. She has also developed comparative research on regional autonomy and self-governance in areas such as Iraqi Kurdistan and the Basque Country (Spain). From 2008-2014, Rabgey led the development of the TGAP Forum, a research initiative that engaged policy researchers from the Chinese State Council in Beijing, as well as global academic partners including the University of Oslo, McGill, UQÀM and Harvard. The seven-year TGAP process developed new insights into the institutional structure and dynamics of China’s policymaking in Tibet. Before joining the Elliott School, Rabgey was a lecturer at the University of Virginia where she was co-director of the UVa Tibet Center. Tashi Rabgey cofounded a school Lithang county that was recognized as a top rural Tibetan school in Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, a region of nearly a million Tibetans. She is also cofounder of Machik, a Washington DC-based nonprofit organization that has been developing strategies for Tibetan empowerment, creative development and social innovation in Tibet for over twenty years. She holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University, as well as an LLM in international law from the University of Cambridge and a law degree from Oxford where she was a Rhodes scholar. She has served as Visiting Professor at Sichuan University and at the University of Kurdistan (Iraq), and is currently an elected board member of the Amdo Research Network as well as a member of the National Committee on US-China Relations.

Moderator:

Alex Neve, Senior Fellow, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa

Opening remarks will be made by Global Affairs Canada’s Director General of North East Asia, Joya Donnelly. Samphe Lhalungpa of the Canada Tibet Committee will make brief closing remarks.