Anti Human-Trafficking in Bangkok

Hi from Bangkok!

I’ve been working for the Mekong Region Law Center, researching human trafficking in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar, and working with the Bureau of Anti-Trafficking of Women and Children in Bangkok. This is an awesome time to be learning about anti human-trafficking laws in Thailand because on June 6^th a new law to prevent and suppress human trafficking was put into force.

Human trafficking is a huge issue here because Thailand is a destination country of trafficked victims, an origin country, and also a transition country. Human trafficking and exploitation is also very obvious here. For example, I was driving with a Thai friend of mine and a little kid came up to the window of the car selling flowers. My friend pointed to a sketchy man standing close by and explained that the kids were probably with him, and that gang members often exploit children by drugging them to make them look more pathetic, and then forcing them to beg.

One of the most interesting issues of the new trafficking law is that it further blurs the line between mistreated illegal workers, and human trafficking victims. In my research, I have been concentrating a lot on a case from Ranong, a southern province of Thailand, where 120 illegal Myanmar migrant workers were being carried in a refrigerated truck when the air conditioning broke, suffocating 54 workers to death. Those surviving workers were arrested and fined for illegally entering Thailand, but once they were released, were protected as human trafficking victims. According to the old Thai anti-trafficking laws, this seemed to be the proper way to deal with the matter, however there has been a big controversy as to whether the survivors should have been jailed, or immediately treated as human trafficking victims. The side that feels they should have been treated as victims explains that they were transported in an abusive way, and the fact that they consented should not be taken into account. There is an important section of the new law that seems to lean more toward the latter opinion, and so I’ve been trying to examine through second hand research, and interviews with key officials, whether that case would be treated the same or differently under the new law, and whether it presents any other problems regarding Thailand’s other laws, and security.

Thailand is an incredible country! The people are so kind and there have been so many times that they have gone far out of their way to help me. Their respect and kindness is reflected in so many ways through their language and culture. For example, the word Ka (for females) or Khrap (for males) attaches to the end of every sentence just to show politeness. The layout of Bangkok is interesting to me because there is no recognizable pattern- there are tons of huge skyscrapers, surrounded by pretty little communities, bordering ghettos, with massive temples rising from the center, but every part has something new to offer, whether it be food, scenery, or a random elephant passing by. The food is amazing! I’ve had a couple frightening experiences, like finding out that I was eating “insect fetus” or drinking a crazy herbal remedy to my bronchitis, but I look forward to eating lunch with my Thai co-workers every day, or eating something new off of a street car in my neighborhood.

This has been an awesome experience so far- right now I’m looking forward to interviewing more officials and lawyers in different parts of the country. In a couple of weeks I am visiting a shelter in Southern Thailand to speak with prosecutors down there about their take on the new law, and will also begin working on the Ranong case with the Department of Special Investigations.

Can’t wait to send updates!

Jill

Center for Constitutional Rights

Hi all! Greetings from…New York City, where I am interning this summer with the Center for Constitutional Rights. CCR is a legal and advocacy organization, founded by the radical lawyer William Kunstler in the 1960s. It started out by defending freedom activists and the civil rights movement in the South, and while the scope of the litigation has expanded to include an international human rights docket the mission stays basically the same: to use the law ‘proactively’ to create social change.

My work here is varied and fascinating—I am assigned to several cases that are in different stages of litigation, including a FOIA Ghost Detainee & Extraordinary Rendition case; an Abu Ghraib torture case involving Titan; and I am also working on resettlement policy for detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

Of course, being at CCR a few weeks ago when the Boumediene v. Bush decision came out was exciting and inspiring. CCR was co-counsel on the case, which by a 5-4 decision at the Supreme Court held that detainees at Guantanamo Bay could bring habeas corpus claims in U.S. Federal court. Following the establishment of Gitmo for ‘war on terror’ detainees, CCR was the first organization to represent detainees there, and now serves as a sort of central coordinator for all Guantanamo habeas counsel. Now, of course, Guantanamo Bay detainee representation is a matter of deep principle and commitment from all corners of the legal community, and plenty of major firms and law school clinics serve as habeas counsel for Gitmo detainees (including Professor Ratner’s IHR clinic at Fordham). For a long time, though, CCR was an outlier and an outcast from the legal community, principled stand, facing strong vilification and condemnation. (Old habits die hard, I guess, though—there is very good reason to believe that the U.S. government is illegally spying on habeas counsel for Gitmo detainees, severely compromising attorney-client confidentiality).

CCR calls its summer interns “Ella Baker Fellows,” so a word on that before I check out—Ella Baker was a “hero of the civil rights movement,” who lived a life straight from a novel. She spent her life devoted to the poor, the disenfranchised, and fighting for the civil rights and voting rights movement in the South. Ella Baker worked with Martin Luther King as Executive Director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and had a tremendous influence on the more radical Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

Working at CCR is a bittersweet, I must admit; it forces me to take a very detailed look at the ugly parts of U.S. policy regarding human rights and constitutional rights. The sheer scope of the human rights and civil rights violations committed by the U.S. over the last 8 years is overwhelming and could easily make cynics out of dedicated advocates for change or the most optimistic lawyer. Still, the lawyers at CCR are superbly talented, and their string of victories in a number of important SCOTUS cases (Rasul and Boumediene, for starters) go along way to instilling faith in the functionality of our constitutional system.

In any case, I'd love to hear what everybody is else is doing and see some more pictures from different parts of the world!

P.S.: On July 10th, CCR interns will challenge ACLU interns--including current Leitner Intern Amal Bouhabib--to a kickball match. Stay posted for details on how badly Amal & the ACLU are going to lose.

Hi from Cape Town

I have been in Cape Town for about a month and with all of the various crises going on in Southern Africa, work has been extremely interesting. I am working at the Women's Legal Centre, which takes on test cases to challenge discriminatory laws and policies, and also does advocacy to ensure that women know their rights. I have been working on a paper about comparative customary law, with the goal of proposing implementation of a new customary legal system in South Africa (there currently is none). Researching American tribal law was particularly interesting, as I didn’t know much about the system previously. Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Egypt and Zimbabwe are some of the other countries that have separate, but appealable, customary law courts. I have also worked on applications to appeal various cases, and done research into extending the law so that domestic violence is recognized as a form of duress to void contracts, and researched voyeurism and child pornography laws in South Africa, the US and the UK.

The xenophobic crisis tipped at about the same time I arrived in South Africa. There are currently thousands of displaced people around the country who are afraid to return home. Unfortunately, many people have either lost their immigration documents, had them stolen, or can't get access to Home Affairs to receive their refugee status papers. The mayor of Cape Town promised that she was working on the problem 3 weeks ago, but to date it appears no work has been done. The Legal Resources Centre took up the cause, and I recently went to one of the refugee camps in Cape Town along with about 20 other lawyers and law students to gather information to present to Home Affairs. Hopefully our information gathering will force Home Affairs to reissue lost or missing documents, and to issue refugee status for those without it. The camp I went to housed about 300 people, mostly from Zimbabwe, Burundi, Rwanda and Congo. The experiences the refugees have had are disheartening, and hopefully the work we were doing will help Home Affairs get sorted and start dealing with the problem of documentation.

Another interesting development here is that the High Court ruled last week that Chinese are to be reclassified as black in order for the Chinese who were discriminated against during apartheid to benefit from affirmative action laws. While this sounds strange, the reason is that the laws written after apartheid were written with racial classifications, for instance the Black Economic Employment programmes didn’t provide for affirmative action for Chinese, who were classified as coloured under apartheid, but are generally thought of as white today. It has been 14 years since apartheid ended, yet the ongoing effects are still rampant. Hopefully this decision will help to remedy the past effects of discrimination against the Chinese in South Africa.

Other than work, Cape Town has been great. There are about 15 other US law students here working for various human rights organizations, and it is great to be able to see what work each of the organizations are doing. I can’t believe it has been a month already – I know that the rest of my time here will fly by. I look forward to hearing about everyone else’s experiences around the world!

Hi from Phnom Penh

I feel like I should blog right after Adam because I have as different an internship as I can imagine being funded by the same organization. I'm working jointly for the Face to Face AIDs Project and Salvation Centre Cambodia, out of Phnom Penh, on a project about the obstacles faced by disadvantaged children in the Cambodian educational system. Both organizations have come to be involved with vulnerable children and educational issues here as an outgrowth of their work with the Cambodian AIDs crisis.

It's taken me about a week to meet everyone and make a schedule. I'll be working at the SCC's Boeng Kok school Mondays through Wednesdays, where I will help teach and also interview the children and teachers.

On Fridays, I'll head south to Takeo province to help out at the orphanage at Wat Opot. Originally more of a hospice for AIDs patients, Wat Opot has become a children's community for children orphaned by AIDs and HIV-positive children. I hope to stay out there some weekends, although I'm not entirely certain of my stamina for life without air conditioning in the Cambodian rainy season -- even for someone like me, who hates air conditioning, this is rough going. So far, it seems I'll be getting their sewing machines working and showing them macrame (of course I can make macrame pot-hangers! I'm a law student.) and also interviewing the kids.

SCC is helping set me up with interviews with teachers in the public school system as well, and I hope to spend Thursdays doing research outside of the two schools I'll work at.

I don't have much in the way of pictures yet -- I want to get to know people before taking their portraits. This boy, however, came running up to us when we were traveling back from Takeo on Friday and said, "Take a picture!" I showed him himself on the digital screen and he grinned and ran away.

Also, I hope to figure out how to post a short movie about trying to cross a Cambodian street.

A Summer at the UNDP

Since I wrote the final post last summer, I suppose it's appropriate to kick off this summer with the first one. This year, I'm in New York, working with another intergovernmental organization, the United Nations. As with everything at the UN, there are a lot of acronyms to describe exactly where I'm working: I'm at the UNDP (UN Development Programme), in the BDP (Bureau of Development Policy), in the PG (Poverty Group), and working primarily on Legal Empowerment issues (sometimes shortened to LE).

It's a very exciting time for Legal Empowerment at the UNDP--the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor just launched its final report today. The Commission was independent, but hosted by the UNDP--it was co-chaired by Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and the economist Hernando de Soto. At the core of the report are four pillars: Property Rights, Labor Rights, Business Rights, and Access to Justice and Rule of Law. The main idea behind Legal Empowerment is that given the right opportunities--whether by formalizing land ownership, providing accessible dispute resolution, or ensuring effective legal systems--the marginalized and vulnerable groups of the world (an estimated 4 billion people that are excluded from the rule of law) can pull themselves out of poverty. Basically, Legal Empowerment says the world's poor don't need aid, they need opportunity in the form of legal, political, and ownership systems that work for them and put them on equal footing with the elite. After years of meetings and many revisions, the report is out, and the Commission has made its recommendations. Now is a crucial time as policy makers and country offices at UNDP determine how to proceed, utilizing Legal Empowerment's concepts and methodologies to promote development in line with the UNDP's Strategic Plan.

I feel that I am very much on the cutting edge of this new terrain in development--so far I've been in contact with country offices across Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe, helping to coordinate their country-level efforts with the BDP, UNDP's policy center. One of my biggest tasks so far has been to develop a database of Legal Empowerment projects going on around the world, both in progress and in the pipeline. This serves dual purposes: it helps to raise partner and donor awareness, which can lead to direct project support, and it also provides a model for other country offices who are looking for programming best-practices in specific areas.

I attended the launch this afternoon, and it was an amazing event. Dignitaries and press were there from all over the world. I got to hear Madeleine Albright and Hernando de Soto speak about legal empowerment, along with Naresh Singh, the Executive Director of the Commission, Kemal Dervis of the UNDP, and Mike Bishop, a writer for The Economist, acting as moderator for the expert panel. I got to meet and speak briefly with both Dr. de Soto and Secretary Albright(here's a picture of me with her: I'm the one with the goofy smile). I was very happy for the opportunity to see and hear great minds elaborate on Legal Empowerment of the Poor around the world, and was more than impressed with what they had to say.

So far it's been a great summer, and I'm less than a month in.