Jocelyn McCalla

Mr. Jocelyn McCalla "is the Executive Director of the National Coalition for Haitian Rights (NCHR), from which he took leave briefly in 2002-2003 to help develop the Kenya-based African Jesuits AIDS Network. He returned to the helm of the NCHR last November 2003.

"Mr. McCalla has long been involved in international human rights and US policy analysis and advocacy, first as Associate Director of the NCHR from 1986-1988, and then from 1988 to March 2002 as the NCHR’s Executive Director. In that capacity, he became the leading advocate of human rights-based US policies toward Haitian refugees and immigrants and their motherland, testifying frequently before the US Congress, and working with a wide range of non-governmental organizations, US Government, UN and OAS officials to promote human rights in Haiti. Working with a broad grouping of key civil rights, labor, religious, immigrant and human rights advocates, NCHR led major efforts that resulted in 1986 and 1998 in legislative remedies that together allowed some 90,000 Haitian refugees to gain legal immigrant status in the US." 


 * Member, Human Rights Watch Americas Advisory Committee