User:Dooleydooley63/sandbox

Brian J Dooley (born in London, 1963) is a human rights activist and author. He is currently Director of the Human Rights Defenders Program at Human Rights First in Washington DC.

Education
Dooley was educated at Salesian College Battersea, The University of East Anglia, The George Washington University, and The Open University. He has an MPhil in Politics.

Early Activism
Dooley canvassed for The Labour Party in the 1979 UK General Election won by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party. In 1981 and 1982 he lived in South Africa, in a designated "Blacks Only" area between Madadeni and Osizweni townships, in defiance of the apartheid era Group Areas Act. In 1984 and 1985 he worked for Senator Ted Kennedy in the United States Senate, researching what ultimately became the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act. In the late 1980s as a journalist on the Catholic Herald he campaigned on anti-apartheid issues and miscarriage of justice cases related to Northern Ireland, includingThe Birmingham Six, Guildford Four and Maguire Seven.

Human Rights Experience
Dooley joined the staff of Amnesty International in February 1991, and worked for Amnesty International for 17 of the next 20 years, based in London and Dublin. He helped found the Amnesty International UK Media Awards and was on various Amnesty research teams including those during the 2006 Lebanon War and the Gaza War in 2009. He also worked on projects in national Amnesty offices and other NGOs in a range of countries, including Liberia, Indonesia, Romania, Cambodia, Timor Leste and Botswana. During 1994 he reported for BBC World Service on a coup in The Gambia and the Casamance conflict in Senegal. From 1996-199 he was Director of Communications at prominent U.S. NGO Public Citizen.

He has lobbied and spoken at briefings on human rights at the White House, U.S. Congress and the British, Irish and Swedish parliaments.

He is currently Director of the Human Rights Defenders Program at Human Rights First, with a focus on human rights activism in Bahrain, Egypt and Indonesia. Following research trips to the country in 2011 and 2012 he produced a series of reports on human rights violations in Bahrain critical of the Bahrain regime and U.S. Government policy on the country. These include;

Speaking Softly

A Tortuous Process

No More Excuses; and

The Gathering Storm

In January 2012 he was denied entry to the country by the Bahrain authorities but was admitted on a restricted visa in March 2012.

Published Work
His work has appeared in most major international media outlets - during the 1980s he was a literary critic for The Guardian and The Irish Times and is now a regular commentator and contributor to Huffington Postand other international print and broadcast outlets, including Washington Post, New York Times, Foreign Policy, and Al Jazeera English.

He is the author of Robert Kennedy: The Final Years, Black and Green: The Fight for Civil Rights in Northern Ireland and Black America and [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Choosing-Green-Brian-Dooley/dp/1900960265/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333236129&sr=8-1 Choosing the Green? Second Generation Irish and the Cause of Ireland].