Yakin Ertürk, former UN special rapporteur on violence against women, will speak at the annual J. Jobe Soffa and Marguerite Jacqmin Soffa Distinguished International Visitor Fund lecture series on March 18, 2010, in the AT&T Lounge of the Pyle Center at 4 p.m.
Ertürk, professor of sociology and head of the Gender and Women’s Studies Programme at the Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara, Turkey, will be discussing “Universalizing Women’s Human Rights: The Quest for Gender-Just Peace,”
The Division of International Studies sponsors the public lecture, which provides regular talks on contemporary issues of global significance.
BIO: Yakin Ertürk, Former UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women
Yakin Ertürk, who holds a PhD in development sociology from Cornell University, is a professor of sociology and the head of the Gender and Women’s Studies Programme at the Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara, Turkey. She also taught at the Centre for Girls, at King Saud University in Riyadh from 1979 to 1982 and from 1979 to 1981 served as its chair.
Between 1997 and 1999 she was director of the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW) for the United Nations in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. She then served as director of the UN Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW) at its headquarters in New York from 1999 to 2001. In August 2003, she was appointed special rapporteur for the United Nations Commission on Human Rights on violence against women, its causes and consequences, a post she occupied until December 2009. She was recently elected by the ministers of the Council of Europe to serve a four-year term in the European Committee on the Prevention of Torture (CPT).
Ertürk has worked for many national and international agencies on rural development and women in development projects. Her academic areas of interest include: international human rights regimes; identity politics, conflict and violence against women; globalization and population movements; household labor use patterns; and women in development.