Salvadoran Supreme Court Justice Mirna Perla spoke last night on human rights and domestic violence in post-war El Salvador in the auditorium of the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library. The event was an International Guest Lecture, co-sponsored by the Women's Center, Law School Human Rights Program and Latin American Studies Program.
During the speech, Perla addressed the audience in her Spanish dialect of Castellano, and was assisted by a translator from the University.
Perla was deeply involved with humanitarian and peace efforts during the El Salvador Civil War which plagued the nation from 1980 to 1992. She was the General Coordinator for the Commission for Human Rights in Central America for six years and focused on women's rights, domestic and sexual violence, and disappearances of children in a war-stricken nation.
Perla's husband, Herbert Anaya, was a central human rights activist and was assassinated within one year of his appointment as Commissioner for Human Rights in the 1980s.
Women's Center Director Sharon Davie said Perla's presence was "important in that she's an extraordinary human being and represents a commitment to human rights that is active even through the most difficult times."
In her presentation, Perla first reflected on the unstable state of El Salvador during the war by providing facts and figures that emphasized the systematic violation of human rights and killings of over 70,000 civilians in the nation. Perla then moved to the focus of her speech: highlighting the drastic increase in poverty, unemployment and various forms of violence as results of the socially and economically fragile post-war state of El Salvador.
However, Perla also provided a strategy for the substantial eradication of domestic violence from the social realm through such mechanisms as cooperative training, communal exchange of experiences and reaching out to students internationally.
"What is important for us is to talk to students from all over the world," Perla said, "as it allows us to transmit a message on an international scale and helps to form a sense of social awareness and purpose in them from a young age so that they may show solidarity in support of women and other victims of violence."
Politics Prof. Lawrie Balfour said the lecture was a "rare and remarkable opportunity for faculty and students to hear someone who not only knows about human rights in theory, but has been a prominent activist for such a long time."
Balfour's sentiment was echoed by Davie, who added that the lecture was essential in exemplifying "the University's ever growing inclination towards providing an international education and global perspective on important issues, such as Justice Perla's efforts, which happen to pertain to The Women's Center and Law School Human Rights Program."
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