It's Only The Beginning!

Although the Middle East has long been viewed by many in the Western hemisphere as a haven for despotism and the rule of harsh dictatorships, if the Arab Spring has taught us anything it would be that this region can pleasantly surprise us with sudden changes of course and humanistic endeavors.

I worked this summer with the Maria Cristina Foundation (MCF) in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates to secure registration for our charitable mission: to provide excelling children from Bangladesh the opportunity to attend some of the UAE's most reputable private schools. MCF began over six years ago in Dhaka, Bangladesh where Maria Conceicao, a flight attendant based out of Dubai, was moved by the level of poverty she saw in Bangladesh. She began to collect resources and school supplies and distribute them in the slums each time one of her flights landed in Dhaka. The support she received from the Dubai community, eventually allowed her to set up a school and day program, aptly named "The Dhaka Project", that has now grown to provide education for 500 children and their families.

Just over a year ago, the Dhaka Project was in full swing when Maria realized that several of the children had exceeded all of their teacher's and curriculum's expectations. The question she faced was whether the Dhaka Project could afford to encourage the children to keep maximizing their full potential and support their dreams of attending high schools that could lead them to potentially attend world-class Universities. Before it even seemed like a plausible idea, Maria knew the answer would have to be an unequivocal, yes.

Maria's decision to support this new endeavor led to the setting up of the Maria Cristina Foundation in Dubai. The opportunities for Maria's children to come to Dubai and enroll in school were overwhelming. Several Dubai private schools were competing for the children and even offered to pay for their transportation. However, the challenge she faced is that the UAE has a strict policy for registering charities and NGO's. In fact, there are no "local' or grass roots NGO's permitted in the the UAE. Each NGO that wants to set up an office in Dubai must have been registered abroad for at least five years and register under one of five government organizations. Furthermore, the office must be set up in one of the emirates "free zones" and have at least ten branches abroad.

Fortunately for MCF, the Ministry of Higher Education ("Ministry") agreed to sponsor the children's visas and made an edict that MCF could partner under the Red Crescent Society in Dubai. When I arrived, the Ministry had already sponsored seven children's visas, but the main problem for MCF was getting all the paperwork for the Red Crescent Society underway so that MCF could open a bank account, open an office and hold fundraising events.

Because MCF had been "brought" to Dubai under edict by the Ministry, our humble organization did not fulfill many of the requirements that would ordinarily already have been satisfied by an NGO by the time they partnered with the government office. To add to the mix, MCF would be the first autonomous "grass-roots" NGO to ever open in Dubai let alone be sponsored by the Ministry. Thus, our task of coordinating all the essentials for the smooth running of an organization proved to be quite challenging. No formula, or road map existed to guide us to the best solutions to our problems. My days were spent running around the Emirate organizing all the paperwork that Red Crescent needed to open a bank account for MCF, get us approved for an office space outside of a free zone, and secure Red Crescent's partnership so that we could get approval from the Islamic Affairs and Charitable Activities Department for fundraising events.

All in all, this pursuit took up the better part of my summer, but eventually we managed to accomplish everything that we needed for the efficient running of an office and and a registered NGO.

The latest pursuit of MCF, is to take recent graduates of the Dhaka Project school in Bangladesh and partner with Emirates Airline to sponsor their training in various fields of company and thereby, find them long-term employment. This new endeavor has proved challenging both for MCF and the Dhaka graduates. First, we had to convince Emirates that this proposal was not a waste of time and that providing free training to our candidates would be in their best interest. Second, the teenagers would have to combat the language barrier and homesickness. Third, MCF has to satisfy the requirements of the Bangladeshi Embassy in the UAE and verify that the children are not being used for underage labor.

Fortunately, we couldn't have chosen our first two candidates better. Robin and Al Amin keep our office lively and fun. Although, they can be a handful at times, and need to be continually reminded to do their homework, everyone in the office enjoys their zeal and exuberance for life. The two 18-year old's have never traveled outside of Bangladesh, been on a plane or seen a shopping mall. Every day they have new questions for why things are he way they are and we have to continually remind them to speak English to each other. At the end of their six-week course with Emirates, they will have to take an exam and pass with 80%. On top of that they will have to pass an interview with the Emirates HR department.

I truly do not envy the pressure that these two young boys must be under. Although they are young, they do understand that their success or failure with Emirates will decide the fate of many other young Dhaka school graduates that might be able to find employment with Emirates in the future. Besides this, however, they know that they will have to return home to Dhaka if they are not employed with Emirates. Unfortunately, returning to Dhaka would mean that their options for upward mobility in employment would be severely limited by social status and economic conditions. The boys dreams of having a families of their own and being able to help their parents small businesses in Dhaka would almost certainly be shattered if they don't pass their final. Robin, in particular, has a girlfriend in Dhaka that he desperately wants to marry someday, and continually reassures me that he has to pass if he ever wants to face her again. Al Amin, similarly comes from a large slum family and says that no girls will talk to him if the does not get a job. Everyday as he heads out from the MCF office to the Emirates program, myself and the other ladies in the office tell him to "lighten up on the cologne" but, honestly, he thinks it's the best thing, ever, and never listens.

Besides the utter joy I've received from partaking in a project that is dedicated to helping children reach their full potential, by far the most important thing I have done in my work with MCF is help establish the beginning of a system where grass roots NGOs may be able to set up in Dubai and establish the first inklings of an organic UAE civil society. My work with MCF has proved that there is a sliver of hope, however narrow, for movers and changers in the Middle East to make a difference in the institutions that at first glance seem like immovable mountains. With hard work and perseverance it is possible, I believe, for this generation of Middle Easterners to expand the horizons for humanistic principle in their societies.

Twitter & Feminism in Transitional Justice

My experience as a Leitner Intern this summer was about flight. Flight of ideas, flights from New York to Paris and back again, flights across the web.

I worked at the International Center for Transitional Justice for the Gender Justice program under the guidance of its fantastic director, Kelli Muddell. For the month of June, I was in the New York office every day, conducting research on gender and transitional justice in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). I read, compiled, and provided feedback on a list of sources that were then used for a conference in Beirut to help implement transitional justice measures for women in the region. The documents covered transitional justice generally through a gendered lens, truth seeking commissions, civil society participation in truth seeking commissions, reparations, civil society and participation in the international criminal justice system, criminal justice generally, and security sector reform (including civil society participation). I also provided feedback and extensive editing on a number of other related documents to help activists prepare for implementation of transitional justice measures.

At the end of June, I went to Paris where I studied French language, Human Rights, Comparative Family Law, and World Trade and Development. I took classes at the Sorbonne (Paris I) with Cornell University's Summer Law Institute along with students from all over the world.

In addition to my coursework, I continued to work for ICTJ on a monthly gender situation report. ICTJ sends monthly situation reports from and to its various offices all over the world, allowing staff and interns a window into the global work in transitional justice. This project was and is becoming one of the most valuable experiences in my career. My assignment was to follow the news on gender and transitional justice and write up a summary of the relevant articles I found.

I ended up turning it into something much more fascinating than I ever anticipated. I created a list on Twitter of different organizations and news media that I wanted to follow - a list that included organizations like UN Women, Equality Now (an NGO I interned at in the Spring), Al Jazeera, the International Justice Tribunal, the ICC, Global Fund for Women, and more.

I followed this list regularly for updates. Not only was I reading the news; I was also watching the revolution in Libya un

fold. So I did more than summarize the articles I found - I analyzed and critiqued them.

In particular, I was interested in the way

s states use sexual violence and oppression to silence women's voices and participation in democracy and revolution. The following is an excerpt from my summary and analysis:

"This article demonstrates how different forms and degrees of sexual violence are used to reinforce gendered boundaries and keep women in the private sphere...By exploiting cultural norms about female sexuality, the state is able to use sexual violence, assault, and harassment to keep women out of public life...The article treats information accessibility and the link between democracy and patriarchy as separate issues, and runs the risk of the incorrect assumption that democracy results in major improvements for women. For democracy to benefit women, it must be accessible and inclusive. However, as the article contends, the advent of accessibility through social media is important. Not only is information through social media available across the public/private boundary, anyone with Internet access can participate in it. This means that social media could help women gain access to democratic debate, and also enable them to play a more substantial role in shaping it."

Internet access is still privileged and subject to censorship, but it is still an incredible platform on which a vast number of people who otherwise wouldn't have access to

voice can stand. What's more, it can happen publicly or privately, and often simultaneously. By reading and writing the mon-

thly situation report, I was circulating this knowledge through a powerful NGO, and by retweeting posts and adding a few of my own, I was perpetuating the circulation of knowledge that was forming the revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa, or more generally, the ideas that are shaping current feminist and human rights work.

This was particularly fascinating for me, because in college I wrote about problems of ascribing nationhood to women's bodies (see above for the Delacroix painting of La Liberté guidant le peuple), and left for a work of art incorporating the Statue of Liberty that I saw near ICTJ's headquarters in downtown Manhattan. (Or just think of the Statue itself). I should note that I think the Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World) is very different from the French Lady Liberty, or at least has the potential to be: she represents the Roman goddess of freedom and isn't sexualized. She holds a torch, a symbol of light, a crown evoking the seven seas, continents, and sun, and a tablet with writing, which of course enables the transmission of knowledge. Instead of representing American identity, (as Marianne does in France) she welcomes immigrants and travelers to New York City ... and New Yorkers back home.

Instead of finding national identity in a female symbol, it is imperative to a fairly functioning democracy that women's ideas, not bodies, enter the public sphere. This brings me to a project I am finishing for ICTJ, a note for the CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women) commission with UN Women. In this note, I am being asked to identify links between transitional justice and CEDAW to give a stronger foothold in gender-sensitive transitional justice measures. Rape must be seen as a state perpetrated crime, truth commissions must ask women at all levels about their experiences. Success in transitional justice efforts depends upon the full and fair participation of women, and opening up democratic processes to all women harmed by violence and affected by revolution.

Overall, I find the widespread use of women's bodies in museums and public places as a way to articulate political, cultural, social, and philosophical ideas to be offensive and problematic, although as someone who loves art, I can still appreciate the message and beauty of the art for its own sake. However, I demand entry into the conversation. Graffiti to me is a brilliant way to assault the established order and shock the conscience. It requires no ticket for admission, and does not ask for the viewer's permission. Therefore, I end my post with this image (another welcome home!) in the hope that my post will inspire readers to fight for women's rights, for fighting for women's rights is ultimately fighting for everyone's rights. Change begins in the home, and the writing is on my own street ;)

Iraqi Refugees in Egypt

“If you need help with it, just ask Abu Layla,” Amir told me.

Later, responding to a different question, he added, “Abu Layla should know where it is.”

And even later, “When you’re finished, put it in Abu Layla’s box."

All of which would have been helpful information, but I didn’t know who Abu Layla was. (By the way, names have been changed because, who knows?) I was too embarassed to ask, since everyone else seemed to know. However, by the end of the day I needed to know and approached our Iraqi office manager, Malik. "Malik, Amir keeps talking about Abu Layla. Who is that?"

The office manager is a stout, balding man who always dresses in trousers and an ironed polo shirt and sports a pair of large, gold-framed engineer-style glasses that I secretly covet. They have thick lenses and are super-retro-cool. They look like those worn by Walt in “Breaking Bad.” I thought about all of this as he grinned mischievously. “Jonathan,” he put a hand on my shoulder and laughed good-naturedly, “Abu Layla is me."

And so I had another embarassing lesson in Arabic culture. “Abu Shada” means father of Shada, and Iraqi adults are often called with reference to their first-born children.

Malik is a helpful and attentive office manager, and genial (he didn’t laugh at me too much). He is also a refugee from Iraq (most of the staff at the office are refugees). He speaks very good English, which has been common with my Iraqi clients, though with none of my African clients. And, of course, Iraqis speak Arabic, while Somalis, Ethiopians, and Eritreans do not (Sudanese do, for the most part).

Some of these Iraqi refugees government jobs and perhaps even joined the Ba’ath Party (which was often necessary to get a promotion if you worked for the government), which made them targets after Saddam Hussein’s government collapsed under the weight of U.S. bombs. Others aided or worked for American or Multi-National Forces, or translated for a U.S. media company, and were endangered because of their association with Westerners. Most are well-educated, middle-class folks, or at least they were back home. Which is to say that, for the most part, they have an easier time than other refugees in Egypt, but their lives here might be a far cry from what they had in Iraq. (This also means that Iraq is losing a lot of its educated professionals.

Well over two million Iraqis have fled their country since Hussein was deposed in 2003, and many others have been displaced internally. Of those who left, many have gone to Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. A smaller number went to Egypt, but this is a still a lot of people: there are estimates of 150,000 as of September 2008, and it’s surely increased since then. I’ve heard reports of people returning; after all, it’s not nearly as dangerous as it was a few years back. But violence continues in Iraq (28 people, including an MP, were killed at a mosque bombing on Saturday) and for many of these refugees, it is not safe to go back now.

Even for those with a middle-class background, being a foreigner is difficult in Egyt. For the most part, Iraqis are not legally permitted to work. Doctors, engineers, it makes no difference. They cannot enroll in public schools, so expensive private institutions are their only option. Many are drawing from dwindling savings accounts. Some have substantial government pensions, but Egypt does not allow these accounts to be transferred in-country, unlike the policies of Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. Many feel unwelcome in Egypt. And the revolution, by creating instability and by undermining the authority of the police, has unnerved many of the Iraqis I’ve spoken to. This may be why, according to the accounts I’ve heard, the number of Iraqis applying for resettlement is increasing.

Many apply to the quote-unquote normal refugee resettlement program of the UNHCR; others apply directly to a country’s immigration authority, for instance if they have a close relative who lives there and is willing to sponsor them. But those who fled Iraq because they worked with Americans are eligible to apply to the Direct Access Program (DAP). DAP is supposed to make it easier for these Iraqis to apply for resettlement to the US, for instance by not requiring a referral from the UNHCR or other agency. Iraqis who worked with Americans for more than one year (and were thusly endangered and had to flee, of course) can also apply for a Special Immigrant Visa (SIV).

These are very different than the UNHCR resettlement mechanism. Eligibility for the UNHCR program is based on vulnerability in the country of refuge, whereas DAP and SIV criteria don’t address that at all. They’re almost merit-based programs; the key to assembling an application is getting proof that the applicant did in fact work for the American military, or USAID, or whoever. Of course, they must have been targeted because of this association, as well, but that's not usually hard to prove. Stories of black Xs painted on doors and bullets in envelopes are all too common.

The process itself is fairly complex, which is one reason that many have not applied. Some (by now outdated, surely) stats I read reported that only 20,000 applications had been received, though 150,000 Iraqis are eligible for either DAP or SIV. Of those 20,000, only 4,500 or so had been resettled. There is a huge backlog of SIV applications waiting on approval from the US Chief of Mission; this step alone often takes more than a year. Both DAP and SIV require the applicant to provide documentation of their employment by USG or other eligible organizations, which they may not have. (In some cases, the USG insists on copies of contracts to which it is itself a party! The idea that it doesn’t have a copy already is unsettling.) These and other bureaucratic issues seem mundane enough, but since this is a program for people who may still be in mortal danger, such delays are very important. Consider that some people are applying while still in Iraq, where simply approaching the US Embassy in the Green Zone might not be safe. NYT ran an article about delays in the SIV program earlier this month, though I don’t think this issue gets a lot of media attention on the whole.

Working Globally...Locally

Where's Kelly?
I experienced an earthquake and now a hurricane, have teleconferenced with colleagues in Geneva, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Bahamas, arranged a conference in Thailand, and gone into work early to make calls to Turkey. Where was I? In New York, of course! It's been quite an exciting summer working with the United Nations Development Programme ("UNDP") in the Gender Cluster of the HIV/AIDS Group of the Bureau for Development Policy ("BDP"). I had the privilege of touching livesglobally from the UN headquarters in New York this summer.

Part of the UNDP BDP HIV/AIDS Group, Evacuated for the August 23rd earthquake. (I am third from the right)

Reflecting on last year's work:

Last May 2010, I worked in as a Leitner intern in New Zealand in refugee family reunification, with the Wellington Community Law Centre. This was a direct client services position working through the legal process of New Zealand to refugees who had been resettled to New Zealand from parts of East Africa and South America.

This summer's experience was much different, not only because I was locally situated in New York, but also because I had the opportunity to work with an inter-governmental organization ("IGO") as opposed to an non-governmental organization ("NGO"). My involvement this summer was also more focused on policy than on direct client services. Each experience developed a different set of legal skills, and has allowed me to see the benefits of each working environment.

The facts on HIV & gender:

Much of my work has focused on the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women ("CEDAW"). (Get used to the acronyms--this is the UN). CEDAW is the primary international human rights treaty establishing the framework around which discrimination against women can be addressed. Through its focus on gender equality, CEDAW is a particularly helpful tool for enforcing the rights of HIV-positive women and girls. Article 12 of the Convention specifically addresses equality of the right to health, which in the context of HIV translates to equality in access to not just treatment but also to preventative care. Worldwide, about 50% of all people living with HIV are women. In the Caribbean 53% of HIV-positive individuals are women, and in sub-Saharan Africa it is closer to 60%. In Asia, while in 1990 only 21% of those living with the virus were women, this jumped to 35% in 2009. In short, women and girls bear an increasingly significant burden of the epidemic, and this extends beyond just these numbers.

Gender inequality is both a cause and a consequence of HIV. Women and girls' lack of sexual and reproductive health rights contributes to HIV vulnerability. In example, social norms suggesting sexual health education is inappropriate for women and girls, legal barriers requiring women to be accompanied by their husband to visit a sexual health center, and economic challenges preventing women from accessing the financial resources needed to travel to a clinic or pay for services all contribute to increased vulnerability of women and girls to HIV. An estimated 18% of material mortality globally is attributable to HIV. The effects of HIV also fall disproportionately on women and girls: taking on roles as caretakers for HIV-positive family members, experiencing heightened stigma within communities, becoming more likely targets for violence, and being coerced or into sterilization by medical professionals.

The work, an example:

With these realities in mind, one of my primary projects has focused on working with specific countries to augment their monitoring and reporting for CEDAW. Governments and civil society organizations like NGOs both contribute separate reports to the CEDAW Committee every four years. We are working to directly target three Caribbean countries who will be reporting in July 2012. To do this, we analyzed past reports for where HIV was addressed and looked for entry points where HIV could have been discussed and should be monitored in the future. Based on these conclusions, we will hold workshops in each of the countries meeting with NGOs working with HIV-positive women and provided technical support to develop strategies for monitoring discrimination and then for drafting the reports. For the government actors responsible for the report submissions, we will work with them separately in workshops in the same way.

Another aspect of the work has been targeting the CEDAW Committee, a panel of 23 experts on women's rights. Last month, we held a briefing with a plurality of the Committee members to brief them on the HIV dimensions of discrimination against women and develop a framework for moving forward with the Committee on incorporating HIV into the CEDAW report review process. This involvement will heighten in advance of the January 2012 and July 2012 CEDAW sessions as well.

The future:

This summer's work has been inspiring, and I will continue to work part-time throughout the 2011 fall semester.

For more information on HIV/AIDS and for support of the statistics referenced in this entry, see UNAIDS. Global Report on HIV. 2010, available at http://www.unaids.org/documents/20101123_GlobalReport_em.pdf

Summer Internship in Port-au-Prince, Haiti at the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux

This summer I was an Ella Baker law intern with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), and was based at the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) and the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. BAI is a public interest law firm that, in coordination with its US affiliate, IJDH, "strive[s] to work with the people of Haiti in their non-violent struggle for the consolidation of constitutional democracy, justice and human rights con­ditions in Haiti, pursuing legal cases, and cooperating with human rights and solidarity groups in Haiti and abroad." BAI works on the following issues, among others: Rape Accountability and Prevention, Housing Rights, the Right to Vote, Haitian Immigration Rights, and Health and Human Rights in Prisons. In order to bring about change and strengthen Haitian-led rights advocacy, it works with Haitian grassroots organizations to organize people around the right to housing, gender-based violence, and other issues. It also works on the international level, raising awareness of rights violations in Haiti, pushing for policy change in the US, and influencing the Government of Haiti to improve its respect for Haitian human rights through the Human Right's Council's Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process and submitting petitions to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

While I supported various projects of the BAI/IJDH, I spent most of my time working on the Housing Rights Advocacy Project. One component of this project was to visit internally displaced person (IDP) camps in and around Port-au-Prince, to investigate instances of threatened and actual forced evictions from the camps. According to international law, the Government of Haiti has special obligations to protect IDPs' from rights violations. The Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement provide for "protection against arbitrary displacement, offer a basis for protection and assistance during displacement, and set forth guarantees for safe return, resettlement and reintegration." The violent threats and illegal forced evictions occurring in Haiti, sometimes at the hands of private purported landowners and their hired thugs and other times at the hands of local government (such as the Mayor of Port-au-Prince), violate the human rights of IDPs.

The forced evictions also violate the domestic right to housing, which the Government of Haiti is bound to respect. The Haitian Constitution of 1987 provides that the "State recognizes the right of every citizen to decent housing, education, food and social security." Moreover, the Government of Haiti is bound to fulfill the right to housing because it can be said to be incorporated within the right to life, which, per the Haitian Constitution, is an "absolute obligation." The Haitian Constitution provides in relevant part that the "State has the absolute obligation to guarantee the right to life, health, and respect of the human person for all citizens without distinction, in conformity with the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man." According to article 25(1) of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man (now the UDHR), every person has the right to an adequate standard of living, which includes the right to housing. Accordingly, the Haitian Constitution's guarantee of the right to life can be said to incorporate and make the right to housing an absolute obligation as well.

On fact-finding trips to the IDP camps, which I conducted along with BAI attorneys, I was able to learn first-hand the plight of IDPs left homeless by the earthquake of 2010. Not only are IDPs living in tents and other makeshift shelters that neither provide people privacy nor protect them from the elements or crime (as most have no locks), but they are also usually not provided access to potable water or food (this, in the context of a cholera epidemic), and must spend what meager funds they have on these essentials. Toilets are in short supply and are often unhygienic and at the point of overflowing. I spoke with IDPs who had experienced violence at the hands of private and public actors, who feared the imminent loss of their temporary homes, and who had no idea where they would go if they were kicked out of their camp. Most IDPs who are evicted from camps end up on the streets, squeezed into other precarious IDP camps, or in "red" buildings, which are structures in danger of collapse at any moment from earthquake damage.

After visits to IDP camps, I helped draft press releases for the Haitian and international press and co-author opinion pieces for media outlets. I also used Twitter to help disseminate news of ongoing threats of evictions, violent evictions and arbitrary arrests, and IDP/grassroots protests against these rights violations. The articles I co-authored, as well as one podcast I recorded, can be accessed at the following links:

Podcast on Illegal Eviction, http://ijdh.org/archives/20417

Final Whistle for 514 Families as Haitian Government Illegally Closes Stadium Camp, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/beatrice-lindstrom/final-whistle-for-514-fam_b_911638.html

Hundreds of Displaced Families Face Violence and Threats of Unlawful Eviction in the Carrefour Neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, http://ccrjustice.org/hundreds-of-displaced-families-face-violence-and-threats-of-unlawful-eviction-carrefour-neighborhood

Displaced Women Demand Justice in Port au Prince, http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/06/30

Another component of my work on the Housing Rights Advocacy Project was to conduct research on comparative constitutional law (South African and Indian) on the right to housing and draft a memorandum discussing what could be learned from this to enhance advocacy and litigation on housing rights in the Haitian context. One purpose of this research was to help support the BAI statement on the Government of Haiti's report to the Universal Periodic Review (including its inadequate treatment of the housing rights of IDPs). Another purpose is to support the BAI in upcoming litigation on the forced evictions of IDPs from their camps.

Living in Haiti and seeing the current human rights situation with my own eyes--such as by visiting IDP camps, speaking with IDP victims of the earthquake, and attending grassroots groups' press conferences at the BAI office--was absolutely invaluable to understanding the issues I was working on and motivating me to continue working for social justice with my legal education. I was greatly inspired by the work of CCR, BAI, IJDH, and the Haitian grassroots groups they partnered with, and am so grateful to have had the opportunity to work in Haiti this summer.

ICTY and It's Power to Arrest

The dramatic arrests this summer of both General Ratko Mladić and Goran Hadžić have brought the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) back into the international spotlight. After 18 years the ICTY has now arrested all 161 of its indictees. The arrest power of the ICTY raises interesting jurisdictional and pragmatic questions. In order to understand what powers the ICTY actually has to arrest, and how this impacted its ability to effectuate its warrants, this blog details an overview of this fascinating legal area, focusing particularly on its initial arrests, and then the “high-level” arrests it has made in the last decade.

In 1993 the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 827 which formally established the ICTY “for the sole purpose of prosecuting persons responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia.” While the ICTY does not have a formal arrest apparatus, Article 29 of the ICTY Statute provides that UN member states “comply without undue delay with any request for assistance or an order issued by a Trial Chamber.” Consequently, the ICTY has been able to utilize a variety of methods to arrest indictees. In the early years the multinational force under the auspices of NATO had the power to arrest. On July 10, 1997 NATO made its first arrest attempt. Operation Tango, as it was codenamed, brought soldiers to Prijedor, a small town in the north west of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Here they spent four weeks staking out Simo Drljača, a former Serbian police chief thought to have been instrumental in organizing ethnic cleansing in Muslim towns. The mission went awry when the arrest by Special Air Service operatives from the United Kingdom turned into a shootout with Drljača; who ultimately was shot dead. In another Operation Tango mission, executed simultaneously to the Drljača mission, NATO forces disguised as Red Cross officials successfully arrested the President of the Municipal Assembly of Prijedor, Milan Kovačević.

In the same year the ICTY examined the legality of its arrest power. In the Prosecutor v. Slavko Dokmanović the Accused challenged his arrest, claiming he was subject to irregular rendition. Dokmanović was arrested while a livery service that he thought was taking him to a meeting actually was undercover officers. The Trial Chamber ruled that Dokmanović had not been forcibly abducted, but rather just “lured” into the car, and that this was within ICTY powers.

In Prosecutor v. Dragan Nikolić, the Accused was arrested via an abduction by unknown persons who subsequently turned him over to the ICTY. Nikolić argued that his abductors had violated the sovereignty of the former Yugoslavia and this was a grave breach of his own rights as a citizen of the country. The ICTY Appeals Chambers held, however, that arresting and trying an international criminal took precedent over the competing interest of state sovereignty.

The first high-level arrest was realized in autumn of 2000. The fall of former Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milošević transformed the political landscape dramatically and changed the dynamic of the ICTY’s arrest apparatus. Tragically, Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić’s dedication to international justice, rather than Serbian nationalists, would ultimately cost him his life. Until Đinđić’s assassination in 2003, his government, fueled by international pressure, became the main driver for ICTY arrests. President Milošević was arrested by the local police in a 36 hour standoff at his villa home in Belgrade and eventually turned over to the ICTY to face international criminal charges.

Eight years later, on July 21, 2008, Radovan Karadžić, the former President of Republika Srpska, was arrested. Donned with a shaggy beard and long grey hair, he had been living under the assumed identity as an alternative medicinal healer. Karadžić’s arrest was reputed to have resulted from a tip from locals in Belgrade who learned of his identity. While there may have been less political will in Serbia to arrest ICTY indictees after Đinđić’s assassination, the European Union leveraged Serbia’s membership to the sought-after club by making it contingent on Serbia effectuating the remaining arrests warrants.

After Karadžić’s arrest, this left two indictees at large, Ratko Mladić and Goran Hadžić. Over the last decade, Mladić, according to the New York Times "received vital…assistance from Serbian military forces and several of the country's past governments." He was apparently seen at football matches and weddings throughout these years. But, on May 26^th, three special units after surveilling his residence in the village of Lazarevo for two weeks, surrounded it and made the historic arrest. He was immediately brought before a Serbian court, and in a matter of days extradited to The Hague to face his international indictment at the ICTY.

Approximately two months later, in bizarre twist of events, Hadžić’s arrest finalised the ICTY indictments. Apparently the Serbian authorities were tipped off to Hadžić’s whereabouts when he tried to sell an Amadeo Modigliani painting in order to continue financing his fugitive lifestyle. He had been living under a pseudonym in Russia, and was hidden by a sympathetic Serbian nationalist priest; however, a special under-cover police force surrounded him deep in a forest were he had arranged to meet a friend. He too was arrested and brought to The Hague to stand trial.

It appears that the success of the ICTY’s arrest power was predicated on a mixture of international co-operation, changing political tides in Serbian politics, international pressure, and a little luck. It will be interesting to see how other international criminal bodies reflect on the legacy left by the ICTY.

Sources

1. European Journal of International Law

http://ejil.oxfordjournals.org/content/9/1/174.short

2. BBC News “Milosevic Arrested”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1254263.stm

3. The Atlanitc “Why Serbia Captured Mladic and Pakistan Harbored Bin Laden

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/05/why-serbia-captured-mladic-and-pakistan-harbored-bin-laden/239522/

4. Goran Hadzic Arrest: A Turning Point for Serbia

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-14238332

5. Charter of the United Nations

http://www.un.org/en/documents/charter/chapter7.shtml

6. The Hunt for the former Yugoslavia’s War Criminals: Mission Accomplished

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/03/former-yugoslavia-war-crimes-hunt

7. International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia - Enotes

http://www.enotes.com/genocide-encyclopedia/international-criminal-tribunal-former-yugoslavia

8. ICTY Statute

http://www.icls.de/dokumente/icty_statut.pdf

Yes, people actually flee TO Egypt

By 10 AM it’s hot enough that my forehead is shiny with sweat after walking just a couple of blocks. Why did I come to Egypt during the summer?, I ask myself for the umpteenth time. The Cairene sun is already high in the sky, and Ramsis Street is thick with traffic. Cairo is notorious for its traffic - too many cars, too few rules - but from my pedestrian’s perspective, the more jammed the better. It’s easier to zig-zag between cars that are inching, rather than roaring, down the road.

It’s relatively quiet behind the dusty iron gates of St. Andrews Refugee Services. There’s no sign, but the church steeple is visible from the street. There’s another church building across the way, however, and that’s where I was directed my first day, when all I could do to ask for directions was to make a cross with my fingers. I can still hear the din of traffic and the shouts from the informal microbus station across the street, the drivers yelling out their destinations to passersby. But a few trees - there are too few trees in downtown Cairo - shield the courtyard somewhat from the sun and the sound. In any event, as soon as I’m inside the small office, I plop myself directly under the air conditioner, the buzz of which drowns out everything else. I wasn’t in the office during the last protest outside the High Court building, which is just across the square, Midan el-Esaaf, but if I was, I might not have heard it.

I’ve arrived just as our office officially opens. Two Iraqi staff are checking over the day’s schedule and making some tea, spooning heaps of sugar into the small glasses of Lipton. I join them, enjoying the emptiness of the office. Soon the small space will be packed: interns hunched over laptops or interviewing clients, interpreters translating documents on the table in the tiny kitchen, and computer power cables everywhere. Several times a day we play a version of musical chairs, shuffling between tables when someone has an appointment with a client.

The office has been busier than usual, I've been told. Things shut down for a while during the revolution. Even when there weren’t clouds of tear gas floating by, the unstable situation counseled against asking clients to make the trek into Downtown. Intake request forms are still piled high, and despite the pace of work we haven’t seemed make much of a dent.

It’s not clear if the flow of new refugees entering Egypt slowed down due to the revolution (even someone fleeing violence in Sudan, for instance, might think twice about going to Cairo when there are tanks in the streets). It’s not clear how many refugees there are in Egypt, for that matter; the figure changes from one report to another. The UN says 50,000, others say 200,000. Sudanese comprise a large portion, as well as Somalis, Ethiopians, Eritreans, and Iraqis. My own clients are Somali and Iraqi, as it happens. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I’m working at the Resettlement Legal Assistance Project (RLAP) at St. Andrew’s Refugee Services. St. Andrew’s has been around for a while and has several programs, including a school teaching a Sudanese curriculum, and a psychosocial services office. RLAP is a much younger entity. It began in 2008 as the Iraqi Information Office, and dealt specifically with the growing number of Iraqis who had fled the violence in their home country. Presently, the client base is broader and the mission is more focused. RLAP assists refugees in Egypt - from any country - to apply for resettlement to a third country (meaning, neither their country of origin nor Egypt).

“Refugee” is a term of art referring to someone who fled their country of domicile because of a well-founded fear of persecution based on their membership in at least one of five enumerated categories: race, religion, national origin, social group, and political opinion. Ideally, having fled they can enjoy a quote-unquote “durable solution,” but this is not always the case.

Cairo is a big, crowded city - the "greater metropolitan area" holds over 15 million - with high unemployment and poverty rates. I don’t want to imagine what would happen were the government to discontinue its long-standing subsidies on staple products - rice, cooking oil, petrol, and so forth. Being poor in Cairo, and most refugees in Cairo - excluding the Iraqis, who I’ll discuss more in another post - are poor, is tough. It’s even tougher if you’re seen and treated as an outsider, don’t have many legal rights, and don’t speak Arabic (while Sudanese speak Arabic, many Somalis, Ethiopians and Eritreans do not).

In general, refugees in Egypt cannot work legally (and given the unemployment figures, it would be hard to find a job anyway), so are dependent on disbursements from Caritas and other organizations to pay for rent and groceries. They can’t go to public school (Egypt is signatory to the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, but exempted itself from the requirement to provide elementary education same as nationals), and neither do most have the means to pay for private education. Couple this with the antipathy many refugees face on the streets of Cairo, and it’s no mystery why many hope to live in the U.S. or Canada or Sweden, or whichever country will have them.

Most are not resettled. Applications go to the UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees), which evaluates them and calls in some applicants for interviews, a number of which may eventually be referred for resettlement. The UN's criteria require that an applicant's situation be particularly bad (viz, not a "durable solution") in certain defined ways: a need for legal or physical protection, suffering from the lingering effects of violence or torture in your country of origin, a serious medical condition that cannot be treated in the present location, and so forth. The list seemed fairly comprehensive to my eyes when I first read it in preparation for this summer. I hadn't worked on refugee issues before, so I didn’t know what the list doesn’t cover, nor how large the gap is between the words in the UNHCR resettlement handbook and the reality. If you’re a Somali woman who is verbally, even physically harassed by men on the street every time you leave your apartment, you’re probably not eligible. If you come home late one night and are raped, you might have a chance, but the odds aren't good. If you decide to report that rape to the police and they refuse to help you, tell you it was your own fault, and throw you out of the station, you’ll have an even better shot. Before that, the resettlement door is closed to you.

The bar is set pretty high. Only 17 countries allow refugees to be resettled within their borders, though a large proportion - somewhere around 75%, though it varies year to year - go to a single nation: the United States. Resettling refugees who are often destitute (having fled their homes and possessions) and in need of significant assistance to acclimate to a different culture and language, is a financial burden as well as a political one, and there’s little pressure to accept more. The UNHCR estimates that this year it will only consider 3,600 refugees in Egypt for resettlement, and will probably only provide a resettlement referral for 900.

In this situation, a vital part of my job has been to quickly assess the strength of a potential client’s case and, sadly, to turn them away if they don’t have a shot. The office is small and more intake requests are added to the pile every day. Meanwhile, the violence that drove people from their homes in the first place continues. War did not end with the birth of South Sudan, and people are still hiding out in caves in the Nuba Mountains to avoid the northern government’s bombing sorties. Somalia’s officially recognized government controls only a few square blocks of Mogadishu, while militias hold sway in the rest of the country. The conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea remains unresolved. Iraq is shaken by more bombings all too often. For most refugees in Egypt, it will not be safe to return in the foreseeable future. Given the odds for resettlement, the vast majority must make Cairo their home for a long time to come.

Those whose story might fit into the categories recognized by the UN are taken on as clients. My job has been to interview those clients, teasing out their histories, and then write them up in a way that will persuade the UN of their eligibility. This is easier said than done, especially given the cultural and linguistic differences between myself and the clients. I must interview all of my African clients through an interpreter, and if the testimony differs from what the client says if they're called in for an interview, they could be deemed unbelievable by UN interviewers trained to sniff out fraudulent applicants. A lot of details are needed to write a compelling application, so experiences and events are rehashed several times, and sometimes new information is gleaned each time. Sometimes the story is revised in the retelling, which makes me nervous even if the new information strengthens the client's case.


Several more staff have arrived by now, and I’ve moved my computer once already to cede my prime real estate under the aircon to someone with a client. Soon one of my own clients will be here to review her testimony and verify the timeline of atrocities that makes her case viable, and I’ll need to shoo away my fellow interns, whose laptops now share the small table with mine. Back to work.

Rule of Law in Southern Africa

I’ve spent my summer in Johannesburg, South Africa, working for the Southern Africa Litigation Centre (SALC). SALC helps lawyers in southern Africa bring strategic human rights litigation, and also works to strengthen the rule of law in southern Africa. Strengthening the rule of law is the theme that has run through the research that I’ve done this summer, and I’ve worked on three projects in particular.

Earlier in the summer SALC co-hosted, along with Redress and African Rights, a conference focused on ensuring that Rwandan genocide suspects living in southern Africa are prosecuted for their crimes. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) was meant to ensure that those most responsible for the Rwandan genocide would be prosecuted, but was never meant to be the only forum for trying all suspected genocidaires. The ICTR has also stopped taking new cases, and will be winding down in 2013, but there are still many suspected perpetrators living in southern Africa. The conference then focused on ways that southern African states could ensure that genocide suspects do not continue to benefit from impunity. It examined the concept of aut judicaire aut dedaire (extradite or prosecute), which refers to a state’s obligation to either prosecute an individual or to extradite that person to a state willing to prosecute. For states unwilling to extradite suspects to Rwanda, the conference examined the ability of states to prosecute on the basis of universal jurisdiction. The conference was aimed at spurring action, because to date no southern African states have extradited any suspects to Rwanda nor have any southern African states prosecuted any suspects for their crimes. This is in contrast to European and North American countries, which have prosecuted genocide suspects after refusing to extradite them to Rwanda out of concern that fair trail standards would not be met. The conference brought together civil society organizations and government officials, both from the region and globally, and sought to determine how to overcome barriers to prosecution that spring from both a lack of political will and a lack of capacity.

SALC also co-hosted, along with the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Lawyers Association and the International Commission of Jurists, a conference on the future of the SADC Tribunal. SADC is a regional economic body, and one of its organs is a Tribunal that can hear cases between states, and between individuals and states where the individual has exhausted all other remedies or is unable to proceed under the domestic jurisdiction. Crucially, the court is able to hear cases that concern individual human rights violations.

However, the SADC Summit has recently suspended the Tribunal, during which time a review process is meant to take place. The review and suspension of the Tribunal was precipitated by a decision of the Tribunal in which it ruled that the seizure of land from white Zimbabwean farmers was done illegally. Zimbabwe refused to enforce the decision and argued that the Tribunal had been improperly constituted. Rather than sanction Zimbabwe, SADC ordered a review of the Tribunal. SADC hired outside consultants to conduct the review, and the consultants concluded that the Tribunal was properly constituted and made a number of recommendations for the improvement of the Tribunal. The SADC Committee of Ministers of Justice/Attorneys-General also confirmed the findings of the outside consultants. However, the SADC Summit of Heads of State decided to extend the review period, not to reappoint members of the Tribunal whose terms of office were about to expire, and stopped the Tribunal from receiving new cases during the review process. SALC argued that this amounted to a suspension of the Tribunal, which was an illegal action for the SADC Summit to take because it was not allowed according to the SADC Treaty and would deny individuals redress for violations of their rights. The meeting that SALC co-hosted worked to address ways in which regional lawyers, law societies, and civil society organizations could work to ensure that the Tribunal was preserved, and that it emerged from the review process a stronger and more effective mechanism for citizens to secure justice.

SALC has also been assisting in the legal defense of Swaziland Judge Thomas Masuku, a case that it part of a wider rule of law crisis in Swaziland. Swaziland is the last remaining absolute monarchy in Africa, and King Mswati III recently installed a new Chief Justice, who is at the center of the crisis. For example, promptly after being appointed, the Chief Justice issued a judicial edict that said that the King could not be the subject of any legal suit.

The Chief Justice also brought twelve charges of judicial misconduct against Judge Masuku, all of which are unsubstantiated and most of which are not deserving of serious response. For instance, he is accused of destabilizing the court and associating with people who wished to overthrow the regime. He is also accused of referring to the King as “forked tongued” in a judicial decision, a charge that represents a clear misreading of the opinion and a threat to the principle of judicial independence. SALC has been working closely with the advocates representing Judge Masuku in preparation for his hearing before the Judicial Service Commission, a hearing that is presided over by the Chief Justice, the same person who brought the charges. SALC has urged the Swazi authorities to drop the case, which is clearly motivated by fear of independent judges such as Masuku.

However, to be clear, not all of my time this summer has been spent indoors at conference centers and in office parks. I’ve also had the opportunity to explore some of South Africa’s natural beauty, and since pictures are worth a thousand words I’ll end with a picture of myself on the Cape Peninsula.

The Making of a Feminist

I grew up in a family full of brothers, and contrary to what seems to be popular opinion when I first meet some people, I was not the “princess” of the family. I fought my way up, literally and metaphorically, and from an early age was determined to be able to do anything the boys were allowed to do. I tagged along on as many adventures as possible, learning sports ranging from basketball to American football, and amassing my own collection of tools, bruises and bragging rights. I had my girly side of playing house and dolls, but I took on some challenges just to prove that I was as tough and capable as any of the boys. Keeping on the same terms as my brothers became more complicated when I hit high school and sought independence, as my parents worried about where I was going, who I was with and when I would be home. I remember arguing that just because certain individuals in the world could make it an unsafe place to be a female did not mean I should be required to lock myself in at a certain hour out of fear – after all, how was the world going to change if we let them run it through news story intimidation?

I grew more stubborn about my ability to do anything regardless of my gender as I became older, despite gaining a little more realistic caution in the process. I’ve made my more gentlemanly guy friends upset on occasion because I insisted on carrying my bags while they go empty-handed or completing a more physical chore unaided as they stand and watch. Ironically, even with the “I can do it myself” attitude, I am a bit “old-fashioned”/traditional – I still believe it is the guys who should do the asking out for dates and I appreciate men who take the time to hold doors open for women.

I say all this to preface what I am about to say – that I have shied away from the word “feminist.” There are many women rights' leaders who I thank for the privileges that I now enjoy as an American citizen. However, I bought into the most negative connotations of “feminism,” which characterize it as an overbearing and overly aggressive approach to equal rights. This past week has given me a change in perspective though. I have come to realize that much like the words abolitionist, environmentalist, and pacifist, the label “feminist” is a sign of what you are willing to sacrifice for (or have already sacrificed for) and what you believe in. And just like those other words, positive or negative connotations can be given them – by your own actions and/or by others preconceived notions. I’ve come to realize to a much greater extent than before the strength and perseverance that is encompassed in the women’s empowerment movement.

I attended a few all-day meetings last week focused on the women’s political movement in Nigeria. Two of the days were a program run by the International Republican Institute (IRI), a DC based organization “advancing democracy worldwide.” The program was titled “Review of Women’s Political Participation in the 2011 Elections and Strategies Towards 2015.” Women candidates – some elected, some who had lost their bids and others who were contested in their election (meaning their case is currently before the tribunal) – along with some of the women political movement’s leaders, came together with the sole goal of forwarding women’s involvement in the political sphere. Out of all the meetings I have attended here, this one seemed the most useful and most productive. Time was spent discussing what went wrong, what could be changed, what activities needed to start now for 2015 elections.

In those two days, however, I gained a newfound respect for women, all they have done and all they are going to do. Some of these women had been through untold hell just to run for office. Despite maybe not even winning or being substituted by a male party member in the end, they were still at this meeting, determined to discuss election strategies for 2015. And for the most part, these are not the overly optimistic youth you would probably expect. These are women who have raised families and many who have personal stories from elections past. Several of them are likely around or over the retirement age of 60, but you would not guess it from the faces and energy of most of them. They know there is a long road ahead, but they are going to travel it and are working to mentor and encourage other women to join on the path as well.

There is currently a move in Nigeria to implement an affirmative action goal of 35% women in political offices. President Goodluck Jonathan has taken this mandate and appointed 13 female ministers to his cabinet, out of the 43 spots available (slightly short of 35% for those of you calculating, but efforts are being made at least). Most states however, have not domesticated this goal and therefore, it does not have the legal backing, nor the support of all local governments – the 2011 elections actually saw a drop in the number of women elected compared to 2007.

Much like the United States, people have differing views on affirmative action and even some active political women are not supportive of it as a way to increase their numbers in offices. I would guess the reluctance to support such action is partially due to affirmative action sometimes being portrayed as a handout. At the meetings I attended, however, it was reiterated several times that affirmative action was suppose to be a temporary tool to help women empowerment. They were not asking for electorate seats on a golden platter, rather they were asking for fair consideration as qualified candidates. It was even stated that if a woman was just in it for the money, she should step aside and let others knew how to do the job take her spot. These women are asking to be heard, to have the chance to democratically represent a population that is 49% female.

The women are well aware that they will be watched and most critically judged. Some of the comments emphasized this – that the lives they lead must be worth of imitation. They know what it takes to win – they are aware of the need to invest in your constituents, be involved with your community, and engage the support of your party members. However, they were aware of something men do not have to consider as much – they have to prove themselves to give validity to women candidates and that proving of self has to start before they even step into office. Since men have throughout history been considered the natural leaders for such jobs, they are not questioned nor scrutinized as women are. A woman is quizzed on her clothes and hairstyles and questions are raised about whether she is neglecting her duties as a mother and/or wife, whether it would not be better if she stayed at home.

I will not deny men receive their fair share of criticism and face challenges of their own. But they are much more likely to be judged on their actual merit and individual performance in office than a woman. After a scandal, no one says, “Well, that is it, men can’t do the job;” whereas the question of if a woman can do the job is raised before she even announces her bid for office. Women will do the job correctly and they may even do it better than their male counterparts – not necessarily because they are superior to males, but because they must do the job better to claim their place in society; and not just themselves, but for their sisters as well.

I’ve stopped laughing at the “because she’s a woman” jokes that I heard growing up. When you realize what women have fought through just to be accepted as women, such jokes are no longer funny. They just imply that in order to be accepted in the male dominated world, you must become like a man – but even if you do that, you may be called a overly aggressive. I believe in women. I believe that their voices need to be heard alongside the men. I believe they have an unmatched strength and fortitude and can succeed at their chosen courses. I believe that when a job is open, a candidate should be considered on his or her respective qualifications. I believe the genders should not be disregarded – there is great beauty and strength in each – but I believe that for an equal society to exist, both genders must be represented.

If all this makes me a feminist (which, at least by my own definition, it does), then I will proudly claim the label. Here in Nigeria, these women have decided to take a stand. Party lines were put aside and networking was strongly encouraged. Women need to support each other because it is easy to fall into the mentality that you must go it on your own and prove yourself in the boy’s world. But with a population of almost 50/50, it is just as much a women’s world. And there is great value in both sets of voices being heard.

I have desperately tried to prove myself all my life, but it occurs to me now that I have been trying to prove myself in the world of men, rather than prove myself as the woman I am. Come to think of it, in my fight for equal consideration as my brothers, I’ve been a feminist in some ways since a young age. However, I’m learning to give up my bags and step aside when there is a guy around to change the flat tire – not because I couldn’t do the job, but because I am learning to let men be men through their protective strength, while I discover my own strengths as a woman.

“There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”

- Robert F. Kennedy

When I was first introduced to the human rights-based approach to development (HRBA), the discussion revolved largely around its impracticality. While few quarreled with the legal and moral soundness of its premise—that development should be grounded in the rights and obligations established under international law, rather than reliant on the charitable spirit of the donor—most considered it irrelevant in light of the politics surrounding development. If countries were inclined to give, they would. If not, reminding them of their obligations would not do much good. Like many other conversations about international law and human rights, the tone of this one was cautious, if not cynical.

Through my internship at the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, my vision of what is possible began to change and I started to see the practical applications of this approach. A government does not have to accept the HRBA wholesale for it to provide a helpful, and often well received, critique of its programs and policies. And the HRBA is not limited to government actors, as is clearly evinced by the RFK Center, whose model fully embraces it.

Rather than launching independent initiatives, the RFK Center works with human rights defenders on existing projects, empowering them and their communities to claim their rights and assert their voice. Every year the center chooses an activist to honor with the Human Rights Award, which is accompanied by a six year partnership. Through this collaboration the Center supports the activist and advocates on their behalf. For the RFK Center, empowerment, participation, and local ownership serve more than a rhetorical function; they are the foundation of the Center’s work.

Unique in its approach, the RFK Center is the perfect living memorial for a man who lived with legendary boldness and idealism. Ever aware of the obstacles he faced, Robert F. Kennedy pushed the limits of law and politics with imagination and compassion. In his memory, the RFK Center and its laureates continue to do the same.

What's Whack with Immigration

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I have been doing some work at the Children’s Village in Dobbs Ferry for several unaccompanied alien minors who need representation. Briefly explained, Catholic Charities helps children under the age of 18 who have been detained for being illegal immigrants and not being in the custody of a legal guardian. Once a child gets picked up by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (affectionately known as “ICE”) officer, they are put into a detention center in certain places around the country. One such place is at Children’s Village in Dobbs Ferry, about a 1hr train ride north of Manhattan.

Catholic Charities helps these unaccompanied minors in three specific ways. First, they try to assist the recently arrived kids understand the nature of the proceedings and the reason why they are there. This is given in an hour-long orientation called a Know Your Rights presentation, where the minor will get general information about his or her rights, immigration law in the US generally and some examples of ways that minors and others immigrants can stay legally in the United States. Second, Catholic Charities tries to do a basic intake of the client, asking about their particular personal history and case. Last, Catholic Charities, while not technically representing the minor will try to help seek representation for the child, usually a pro bono lawyer either from Catholic Charities itself or perhaps from another friendly organization.

For the past month and a half of my internship, I have gone every week up to Dobbs Ferry to speak with some of the detained children. The conditions that these kids are put in is quite surprising. While they are not in a prison, their freedom is greatly restricted. They live in a large dorm style house where there are classrooms and administrative staff watching over them at all times. Additionally, there is a locking mechanism on the house doors that prevent anyone from entering or leaving the house without the permission of the house master. There are also several security guards and people watching over them at all times. Certain houses have higher security ratings than others based on whether the minor has a previous criminal history or not. Each of these kids is told when to get up, when to go to class downstairs where they learn English and other subjects. They are told when they can play or go outside, and only with express permission.

The restrictive nature of their housing arrangement made me think about the nature of immigration itself. Immigration, as it stands now, is a civil proceeding between the government of the US and the person being deported. For this reason, immigrants are not entitled to the right to an attorney even though they may be detained for several hours or even days. Doesn’t it seem wrong to detain someone for so long in an immigration proceeding and put them in one of these houses without giving them a right to an attorney? Doesn’t it seem like its more of a criminal situation than a civil one? Yeah most government employees will tell you that this is not criminal because the worst consequence is getting taken back to your country of origin and that you can’t be put in jail for just being an immigrant. Yeah sure, but doesn’t being locked up for all the time until you get deported seem a lot like punishment. Most detention centers for immigrants are held in the same place as the prison, in case you didn’t know.

Additionally, the decisions on who to detain and who to deport, made by policemen and judges alike, are highly arbitrary and sometimes fairly capricious.

The following is an account that one child gave me in an interview. For the purposes of confidentiality, any identifying information has been changed or altered so as to protect him:

Juan was three years old when he came to the United States. He was born in Mexico to his two parents, both of Mexican citizenship. Juan doesn’t even really remember coming to the United States. His earliest memories are of him in Phoenix, Arizona with his mom and dad. He continued to live with them until they moved to Queens in New York.

One day while he was riding his bike, he passed by a police officer, who turned around his patrol car and stopped Juan. He told Juan that he was riding his bicycle on the wrong side of the street. He asked him for ID. Juan didn’t have any. He was taken to jail where he was locked up for a few hours. Then, half-asleep he heard his last name being called by the guards. In a stupor he walked to the front of the line and they led him to the patrol car and took him to Immigration court. In court he was asked for his full name. When they realized that he was not the person that they had wanted and that they had mixed up his name with another inmates, they decided to run his name in the system anyway. There they found that he too was an illegal immigrant and so he was put in proceedings.

So now this kid who has lived almost his entire life in the U.S., speaks English better than Spanish, and was picked up on the street for no real apparent reason other than the fact that he might have “looked suspicious”, will have to face being deported and being thrown back into a life he has no idea about: a life in Mexico.

I tell this story because it has happened to countless immigrants and immigrant families. I realize that many immigrants struggle for rights and for an ability to simply live where they have established themselves.

With this struggle in mind, I obviously cannot help but see the other side. Many might say that illegal immigrants take away jobs from U.S. citizens; others say that immigrants do the jobs that no one else will. I think both are true because immigrants get paid much less to do the worst jobs generally speaking. (I’m talking about the most common immigrant worker as opposed to the professional immigrant worker here.) But if those immigrants were taken away, then maybe employers would be forced to raise wages so that U.S. Citizens who would otherwise not work would. This in turn seems like it might allow immigrants who do come to this country protection from abusive work practices that prevent them from getting paid a living wage and from getting protection for human rights violations in the work place. But then you have the problem of immigrants using public services like educations and health without paying any taxes. Some California hospitals have had to close because of so many illegal immigrants stiffing the hospital for the bill. (http://www.federalobserver.com/archive.php?aid=9572)

It all seems to have an effect. But the biggest hold on all of this is really the employers themselves, who dominate D.C. and control the politicians to stall any legislation that would force them to have to pay more to their workers. Most corporations depend on immigrant workers. Just think about all those undocumented Chipotle people that got laid off a few months ago.

(http://articles.cnn.com/2011-02-08/justice/minnesota.chipotle.immigrants_1_illegal-immigration-illegal-workers-immigration-policy?_s=PM:CRIME)

Corporations depend on it. So really is this whole immigration system meant to fail immigrants? Is it meant to just be some way for congress to justify sending someone to their home country just because we feel like it?

These issues are tough to deal with but in the end I think that we have to just let more people become documented immigrants in this country. But the difficult task is protecting people human rights and basic freedoms in the meantime. We shouldn’t treat immigrants so radically different from our own citizens just because they were born in another country, should we? Human rights relies on the fact that we all have one thing in common: we are all human. Bridging the gap between us and them needs to start with immigration. Changing our policies with immigration will radically change how we perceive others and how others perceive us on an international scale. I’d probably need more to back up that statement but for right now I’m going to leave it at that and hopefully you all will agree and see what else is out there. Hopefully these issues will come to the spotlight more as immigration issues become more important in this country.