The Olivet College Betsy Dole Womens Resource Center will host Tanja Markus, of SIPAZ (International Service for Peace), Thursday, April 24 at 12:30 p.m. in the Burrage Library lecture room, as part of its Lunch and Lecture series. Participants are encouraged to bring a sack lunch to the program, which is free and open to the public.

Markus is an international human rights advocate and team member of SIPAZ in San Cristbal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico. The organization was founded in 1995, following the Zapatista uprising in 1994, by an international coalition of faith-based and peace groups. SIPAZ monitors the conflict in Chiapas, Mexico and supports the search for nonviolent solutions that contribute to the construction of a just peace.

A native of Lund, Sweden, Markus was raised in a community of political exiles. Her friends were children of families who had fled dictatorships in Argentina, Chile and Nicaragua. Learning their stories and the history and struggles of Latin America brought forth in her a deep commitment to human rights and justice. Markus earned a masters in law from the University of Lund with an emphasis in human rights and humanitarian law. She has worked with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Stockholm, Sweden; the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia; and Caritas in Valencia, Spain. She has worked as an international observer and accompanier in Chiapas and Guatemala since 2005.

For more information, call (269) 749-6626.

« Back