Human Rights Watch is one of the world’s best known international groups working on human rights research and advocacy. Originally established in New York, it has grown to work in over 90 countries around the world on issues ranging from rights violations during armed conflict to issues affecting vulnerable groups, including women, children, persons with disabilities, LGBT persons, refugees and migrants, and elderly persons. Operating with both regional and thematic focus, Human Rights Watch is well known to dictators and despots around the world as a tough and persistent advocate of civil and political liberties which excels at getting its message out and bring down pressure to stop rights abuses and protect civil and political liberties.

Phil Robertson, the Deputy Asia Director for Human Rights Watch, has worked for the organization for the past ten years and oversees their work on Southeast Asia and the Korean peninsula. Phil will give an overview of Human Rights Watch’s work in the region, and explain a number of broad trends on human rights issues in the region that will be important to watch.

Phil serves as a human rights advocate engaging with government and UN agency officials, a spokesperson representing the organization’s views who regularly contributes to national and international media stories on SE Asia, a strategic campaigner on rights cases and causes, and a researcher and writer on topics of human rights, labor rights, refugees and migration.

Prior to joining Human Rights Watch in 2009, he worked for fifteen years in Southeast Asia on human rights, labor rights, protection of migrant workers, and counter-human trafficking efforts with a variety of non-governmental organizations, international and regional trade union federations, and UN agencies. As program manager of the UN Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking (UNIAP), he oversaw the successful negotiation of the first regional inter-governmental agreement on human trafficking in the greater Mekong sub-region. As a consultant, he researched and wrote the seminal report on trafficking and rights abuses in the Thai fishing industry in 2009. Working for the Task Force on ASEAN Migrant Workers, he co-led the multi-stakeholder, multi-country process and served as primary drafter of the comprehensive civil society proposal to ASEAN for a legal instrument to protect and promote the rights of migrant workers. He directed the Mainland Southeast Asia office of the AFL-CIO's Solidarity Center, working on trade union rights, democratic political reform, and rights of migrant workers, focusing on Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, and Thailand. He also worked as a professional staff member of the Asia Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in Washington, DC. A 1997 graduate of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, he is fluent in Thai and Lao. 

The Club is arranging for Flu vaccinations to again be available this year. We are still obtaining information, but expect the price will 700 baht or less per person.

As in the past, the inoculations will be available for not only PCEC members, but their families, meeting guests, and their friends. They will be given on the Holiday Inn Bay Tower Mezzanine floor on Wednesday morning, 28 October, from 9:30 am until noon. Nurses from the providing hospital will administer the vaccinations. Payment will be accepted at a table located so that it can be done just before the shot is given, similar to last year's procedure.

Click here for information and cautions you should consider if you have any questions about taking a flu shot.

The Sign-up sheet for Flu Shots will be available at next Wednesday's PCEC meeting and following meetings until October 28. Richard Smith who is making the arrangements will also accept sign-ups by email sent to rick2mail@gmail.com until late on Tuesday, October 27. Please include the names or number of additional persons requesting shots when you list on the sign-up sheet or email your information.