Program on Human Rights introduces new speaker series

In January-April 2011, the Program on Human Rights will host the Sanela Diana Jenkins International Human Rights Speaker Series, a weekly series featuring presentations by leading scholars of human rights. The series will comprise 10 high profile international and domestic human rights scholars, lawyers and activists who have made significant contributions to international justice, women and children's rights, environmental rights and indigenous rights.

Sanela Diana Jenkins has turned a life of hardship into triumph, as she has developed into a successful business woman, a devoted mother, and a philanthropist.

As a native of Sarajevo, Bosnia, Jenkins lived her childhood and teenage years in the midst of genocide. She lived in the country long enough to graduate from Sarajevo University with a degree in economics. Shortly thereafter, Jenkins was forced to flee her homeland during the conflict in Bosnia, which was responsible for the death of her brother Irnis. Compelled to leave her parents behind, Jenkins found herself as a refugee in London, where she was eventually granted asylum.

It was in England where Jenkins began to lay the groundwork for her future. Jenkins enrolled in London's City University to further her education. During her schooling, she learned English and worked odd jobs to support her parents back in Sarajevo. Not long after Jenkins discovered her new-found freedom, she met her husband Roger Jenkins, a financial executive in London, who was teaching classes at City University.

Jenkins has dedicated a large part of her attention back to her native land by establishing The Sanela Diana Jenkins Foundation for Bosnia in Memory of Irnis Catic. The Foundation, which is closely associated with the funding of the medical school at the University of Sarajevo, aims to provide financial support toward establishing Bosnian schools and orphanages. Additionally, it is instrumental in building homes for the country's poor, supplying emergency aid & relief, and cleaning the country's lakes and polluted areas. The Foundation is the largest privately funded Bosnian organization of its kind. In 2008, Jenkins won the Mostar Peace Connection Prize for her humanitarian work.