NYU Gallatin Global Fellowship in Human Rights Blog

2015 Fellows

Bon Voyage?

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Ayanna Legros
DRECCA (Fundacíon para el Desarrollo y Reivindicacíon Etno-cultural de las Comunidades Afrodescendientes)
Cali, Colombia

The end of an academic year is the ideal time for reflection. As I approach the end of finals and come down from my caffeine high, I have found myself daydreaming about my summer plans. The two emotions that are most present within me are excitement and fear. The excitement stems from knowing that I will be in one of my favorite regions of the world: Latin America and the Caribbean. My fears: Will my Spanish be rusty? Will I feel alone? What will my host family be like? Will I be able to contribute enough to my host organization?

The human rights seminar this semester has made me more confident with communicating with my host organization. Since securing my placement with the organization, I have developed a positive and strong relationship with them as well as with other recipients of the Gallatin Global Fellowship in Human Rights. Visiting not-for-profit organizations during the seminar has also bolstered my confidence about the prospects of re-entering the non-profit and development sector.

In addition, in my independent study, I have learned about the efforts to promote transitional justice in Colombia over the past two decades, which has prepared me to deal with the reality that issues relating to the Civil War remain unresolved. My independent study has also been useful in helping me think about how I would like to frame my Master’s thesis. I am largely invested in questions of black internationalism and memory. I feel that Colombia will be a great site to explore these questions while its Afro-descended social and political movements gain momentum.

I am looking forward to my work experience this summer and have no doubt that it will be fruitful.

Consciousness and Co-option

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Robert Ascherman
Abahlali baseMjondolo (Shack Dwellers) Movement South Africa
South Africa

Abahlali baseMjondolo, whose name means “residence of the shacks” in Zulu, is the largest and most powerful movement to arise in the post-legal apartheid years in South Africa. Today their mission is to oppose the de facto  economic and social apartheid being led by the African National Congress—Nelson Mandel’s Party, which itself overthrew legal apartheid.

Because of this dynamic, it is impossible to understand the shack dwellers’ struggle without first understanding the history of the struggle against legal apartheid. One of the key components of the struggle was the Black Consciousness Movement, as articulated by Steve Biko. Biko argued that apartheid would never be successfully defeated so long as a mass scale of black Africans—the people who  suffered the most from apartheid—faced a nefarious inferiority complex, which made them defer to the authority of white liberals who wanted to lead the movement, as opposed to following the leadership of black Africans.

Despite concentrating my studies at Gallatin in Liberation Psychology and Social Movements, I had never heard of Biko  when I first decided to spend my summer in South Africa with Abahali. My decision was solely based upon a need to work with an organization that communicates in English. I chose Abahali over the Indian organization, Ekta Parishad, because of what felt like a semi-personal connection to the shack dwellers. My best friend and mentor, Dan Jones, a previous Gallatin Human Rights Fellow, had introduced me to Abahali’s documentary, Dear Mandela.

Throughout my independent study this semester, Biko’s ideas have been quite inspiring, especially when  applied to Abahali baseMjondolo by scholar and Abahali member, N.C. Gibson. This has been quite fortunate for me as a student, helping me clarify my career goal of writing a book or PhD dissertation  about why a liberation psychology movement is needed and how it could be created.

As an organizer, Biko’s works have inspired me in regards to a key question from the fellowship seminar: Should human rights be approached as a strategy or ideology; a practice or a devotion? Biko’s writing—along with the article, “The Power and the Crisis of Human Rights,” by Amnesty International’s former executive director, Larry Cox—has helped me realize that the answer has to be both. Cox shows that uncalculated and unstrategic approaches to human rights only result in co-option. Likewise, Biko shows that Black Consciousness, a strategical articulation of Black Empowerment, gave direction to a new movement struggling against apartheid, and accomplished this because its devotion to the notion that “Black is beautiful.”

Further, Biko shows that Black Consciousness as a model for poor/dispossessed consciousness is a key step in achieving human rights. Shame, stigmatization, and inferiority complexes based on poverty and dispossession prevent social movements from achieving human rights. However, a devotion to human rights, which views the subject not only as a practice but also an ideal, enables the development of committed leaders who can connect people across all lines to achieve justice.

Semester in Retrospect

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Karanjit Singh
Gu Chu Sum
Dharamsala, India

The past semester was an eye-opening time for me as I attempted to understand the Tibetan issue better through the eyes of a younger Tibetan diaspora. You see, in order to comprehend where the future of the struggle lies, the voices of young Tibetans are perhaps the most important narrative to pay attention to.

As we see China become a major superpower in the East and gain political and economic stronghold in the region, we also see the power struggle skew even more as His Holiness Dalai Lama is refused official meetings in various countries. In order to gain further control over the Tibetan populous in the Tibetan Autonomous Region, The People’s Republic of China hopes to install their own version of a new Dalai Lama inside Tibet after the current Dalai Lama passes away. Whatever may be the future outcome of this fiasco, one thing is certain: the future of Tibet lies in the hands of the exiled young diaspora.

The first generation to come into exile and settle in India was largely deprived of a strong infrastructure in India. Similarly, the second generation of exiled Tibetans grew up in an environment where Tibetan schools and businesses were in their nascent stages. The third and fourth generations, however, weren’t denied the proper infrastructure and grew up relatively in the information age of the digital era. These are also the generations that left India and ventured out into the world; they studied at American colleges and received an international outlook on matters of their national identity, culture, and statehood.

What has become clear though, is the presence of a deepening generational gap that is causing conflict within the exile community. The older generations are mainly asking for autonomy, while the younger are increasingly lobbying for an independent Tibet.

This semester I spent time with young activists from Students For a Free Tibet (SFT), a grassroots organization that first began in 1994. SFT is responsible for the groundbreaking Freedom Concerts in the 90s that brought many celebrities to the forefront of the movement to popularize the Tibetan independence struggle. This semester, SFT organized various poetry readings, film screenings, and protests to galvanize the Tibetan youth community in New York City.

I also conducted an archival project this semester in an effort to understand the representation of Tibetans in the media. I attempted to find vernacular documentations of Tibetan life and culture through 20th-century photography.

Despite such a productive semester, I still have lingering questions that I will probe during my summer fellowship. I hope to further understand the generational gap in politics regarding the freedom v.s. autonomy debate. With the insight I have gained into the human rights field through our enlightening discussions in Vasuki Nesiah’s class, I hope to approach my research more academically and without a nationalistic bias, which I felt was hindering me in truly seeing things for what they were.

I am excited and ready to begin the summer research with a fresh set of eyes and insight into the Tibetan issue!

Mums and Maids

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Min-Wei Lee
Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2)
Singapore

At the end of April, I received an email from John at TWC2 regarding a recent video created by the advertising agency, Ogilvy & Mather, for the organization’s new “I Give a Day Off” campaign. I had seen the video on Facebook a few days earlier and even shared it on my wall for friends and family to see.

The video’s concept is simple: a mother and domestic worker appear side by side on a split screen and are asked the same series of questions about the family’s child. The questions are short and personal, like “Who is her best friend?” and “What is his favorite subject at school?” At the end of the video it is revealed that 74% of the maids knew the answer while the mothers did not. The video closes with the title card: Shouldn’t we spend more time with our children? Let’s give domestic workers their legal days off.

The video was getting significant traction on Facebook. A lot of my friends had commented positively on it and shared the video with others—an encouraging sight, as most people, especially those of my generation, appear unaware and apathetic to the issues facing foreign domestic workers in Singapore. I myself had an emotional reaction when watching the video, which prompted me to share it and subsequently send an email to TWC2 congratulating them on a job well done.

It was only when the email from John arrived did I realize the subtle inconsistencies with the campaign video.

In his email, John informed me that he wanted my help during the course of my summer internship to create a new campaign video focused on the fundamental right to a day off. He then proceeded to list the two main issues with the Ogilvy video. Firstly, no fathers were featured. Secondly, the video plays on the guilt of parents for not spending time with their children, and turns that into the basis for giving their maids a day off—an emotional tactic which completely ignores the issue of labor rights.

As I read John’s email, I sat there thinking about my own reaction. I was excited by the amount of attention the issue was getting because of the video but also became troubled by the possibility that none of the people who watched it were conscious of the rights issues behind the campaign, and were feeling strongly about it for the wrong reasons.

Such a dilemma led me to think about the possible repercussions of my own documentary. Though I have barely begun the production process, I am conscious of the personal lens through which my story will be told, and this suddenly makes me wary about my approach. What if I lose sight of the real issues while focusing on an emotional narrative?

I’m glad that this concern has arisen before my departure to Singapore, for it will be something to keep at the back of my mind throughout the course of filming.

From Protest to Torture

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Nadeen Shaker
Egypt

In late March, a letter by jailed Egyptian photojournalist Ahmed Gamal Ziyada is leaked to the press and goes viral. It details four days of his imprisonment in one of the worst prisons in Egypt: Abu Zaabal.

The account begins with a collective disciplinary punishment imposed by the prison’s wardens on students who objected to their fellow inmates’ harassment. The day after, Ziyada is tossed around and prodded with batons and sticks, and then put into solitary confinement, which he describes as follows:

A cell, 3×5 hand-width, with half a blanket, a rotten smelling plastic box to use as a toilet—since it is forbidden to open the cell throughout the duration of the punishment—a dirty bottle of water, a rotten loaf of bread and an equally rotten piece of cheese. No air, no light, no life!

In his last three days, Ziyada grapples with the prison administration, which denies him family visits and gives him a hard time lodging his complaint. The prison doctor declares him “stable,” the torture marks on his body going ignored. Ziyada ends his letter declaring a hunger strike.

In response to his complaint, a delegation from the National Council for Human Rights (NCHR) makes a visit to Abu Zaabal prison. It finds that prisoners are badly treated; put into solitary confinement for a week to 16 days at a time; denied access to the toilets; and are not given enough food and drinking water, amongst others things.

Despite asking to meet with 12 prisoners, the committee is allowed access to only five (these were arrested on charges of illegal protesting and riots on campus). NCHR sends its damning report to the prosecutor-general, who denies its allegations, declaring that prisoners have not been physically abused or tortured inside the prison. An interior ministry official tells CBC eXtra that Ziyada’s torture marks are nothing more than the traces of a mole.

 What happens inside these prisons in regards to torture and mistreatment is a direct effect of the anti-protest law, which has put thousands in prison for merely protesting. Use of torture is one thing, but it sometimes leads to death—a violation of one’s life.

A recorded 217  out of 359 tortures resulted in death during Mohammed Morsi’s stint as president, compared to 80 deaths of detainees since 3 July 2013 during Sisi’s presidency, according to WikiThawra. Three people died from torture in January and February in the infamous Matariya police station. And the list is piling…

Standing for Justice

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Tammy Kremer
Zochrot
Tel Aviv, Israel/Palestine

I am excited to embark upon a journey of organizing a film festival with Zochrot, a Tel Aviv-based organization that educates Israeli Jews about the displacement of Palestinians.

I chose to work with Zochrot because of their approach to building the groundwork for a new political reality in Palestine/Israel: a social democracy in which all have equal citizenship. The crux of Zochrot’s work is directed at Israeli Jews, with the belief that they will need to acknowledge the suffering caused to Palestinians in order to go through the necessary processes of reconciliation that precedes true peace. I also believe that acknowledgment of Palestinian suffering is one of many crucial steps needed to transform the current reality of Israel/Palestine.

I will be assisting in coordinating Zochrot’s third 48 Millimeter Film Festival in Tel Aviv at the end of November and its first in New York City, which will take place concurrently or in early 2016. As my background is in arts and education, this project is a perfect match for my interests. I am particularly excited to see how the production and reception of the festivals will be different in each city.

I come to this project with a personal connection to Israel/Palestine. I grew up in Jewish communities that assumed a shared commitment to Zionism as support for a Jewish State in Palestine. Challenges to this assumption were considered hateful.

My father’s parents were Holocaust survivors. In the late 50s, my father and his family were able to leave Belarus and move to Israel, where my father spent much of his childhood and young adulthood. On my mom’s side, my grandfather escaped Nazi Germany in 1937 and came to the US. My mom went to college in Israel/Palestine. Both my parents served in the Israeli Defense Forces. I was raised in a Hebrew/English bilingual home in Los Angeles.

I grew up thinking I might join the Israeli army, but by the time I got to college I realized that I had heard only a very narrow range of perspectives on Palestine/Israel. Over the course of the last eight years, I have been educating myself and examining my beliefs and biases. It was and continues to be extremely painful to acknowledge the suffering that “my people” have caused and continue to cause to Palestinians. However, while painful, I have a responsibility and moral commitment to recognizing violence past and present and using my privileged membership in the Israeli and American Jewry to stand for justice.

 

Hope, Ambition, Fear.

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Shaquille Romblay
J-FLAG
Jamaica

As I lie in bed watching the short documentary, Young and Gay: Jamaica’s Gully Queens, I think of the millions of queer individuals around the world who are physically, emotionally, spiritually, and sexually abused. I would be lying to myself if I said that conditions haven’t improved drastically for members of the LGBTQ community. However, globally there are many antagonistic beliefs that continue to harm queer individuals.

These dark ideologies are clearly visible in nations such as Jamaica, Uganda, Iran, and Afghanistan. These countries lack socioeconomic development and arguably political advancement. Yet even in the United States, a nation that is socially and politically developed, unfavorable creeds are still being displayed. Recently the US state of Indiana has shown its ugly side with its new “freedom of religion” law.

Thinking about the forms of hate that queer individuals experience puts me in a despondent state. Yet it’s empowering and motivates me. I become inspired to start crafting the various ways I am going to fight for this disenfranchised community. For one, my goal in life first and foremost is to become a talk show host. I want to work in entertainment so that I can use my power to fight against hateful ideologies and macabre practices. I also often have dreams of being rich. Not Oprah rich. Bill Gates rich. I dream of using my wealth and my gift of voice to liberate individuals and end the various forms of mental slavery.

My ultimate goal is to open educational centers and facilities because I believe everyone has the right to learn. But, you see, in school we are taught math, English, science, and history—at least some person’s version of it. We are not taught to love, to feel, and to tolerate.

I am going to Jamaica to understand the island’s roots of dark homophobia, which I one day hope to correct. And to be honest, I am scared. My family is scared, my mentor is scared, and my friends are scared. But what they don’t understand is that my vision is bigger than both them and me. This is a steppingstone to me one day changing the world that we live in. I am not fearful of my haters because ultimately I understand that I am they and they are me. Homophobes don’t fear gays; they just don’t understand them. And the change starts with me.

 

A Lens on the Dignity of Domestic Work in Singapore

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Min-Wei Lee
Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2)
Singapore

Growing up with a live-in maid is a commonplace phenomenon in affluent Singapore. Most do not question it, and before last year, I didn’t either. I never thought that Aunty Loring—my family’s Filipina domestic worker, who has been a second mother to me since I was four—could be the basis for my recent examination of Singapore’s ambiguous foreign labor laws and its societal apathy towards the welfare of foreign domestic workers.

Today, these 218,000 workers from neighboring countries are not protected under the Ministry of Manpower’s Employment Act, which regulates work hours, rest days, safety guidelines, and retirement. They also have no minimum wage. It is both sobering and perturbing to know that up until 1 January 2013, a nation like Singapore—which boasts First World economic and societal standards—had no mandatory labor policy for weekly rest days for foreign domestic workers. Almost 50% of these women still do not receive a weekly rest day.

With a heavily imbalanced employer-employee relationship, these women are often regarded as inferior by local Singaporeans. While their treatment might not fall under the category of malicious physical or emotional abuse, it is arguable that what some Singaporeans regard as an acceptable way to treat their maids is in fact a silent infringement of their human dignity.

Using my experience as a film and television major, I aim to create an intimate documentary through the lens of my family’s relationship with Aunty Loring to shed light on the nuances of domestic work and highlight the value of these workers to the nuclear family unit. In order to gain a deeper understanding of the nature of problems faced by these women, I will be simultaneously working with social workers at Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2), an advocacy and educational outreach group that champions the rights of migrant workers in Singapore. The organization is also an active research center and a helpline for migrant workers who encounter problems with employers, and provides information for employers and the public.

I do not intend for the documentary to be a condemnation of the system but rather a truthful portrayal of these women who contribute to society just as locals do. It will not ignore the bigger issues but will focus on human connections that matter the most to us, which we all can relate to. In the end, I hope this film may serve as a reminder of these women’s common humanity, and their right to respect and dignity.

 

Water Rights in Palestine and Israel

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Carly A. Krakow
Mada al-Carmel — Arab Center for Applied Social Research
Palestine/Israel

My fellowship research examines the intersection of environmental concerns and human rights violations in Palestine and Israel, specifically focusing on water access and water quality in the West Bank and Gaza. My central goal is to investigate how the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, as well as the broader historical relationship between Israel and Palestine, frame the legal classification of the right to water for Palestinians. I also aim to explore why the denial of water rights is not being addressed in any substantive way by international governing bodies, and explore action that can be taken to improve this situation.

children filling water bottles
Children in Rafah, south Gaza Strip, fill bottles with water at a desalination unit to compensate for lack of drinking water in their homes. Photo Credit: UNICEF/El Baba

It is helpful to zoom out for a moment to explore this issue from within an international context. On June 25, 2014, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights reported that water shutoffs in the US city of Detroit were a “violation of the human right to water and other international human rights.” Though the water access situation in Detroit differs from that in Gaza and the West Bank in many ways, all three have a major common denominator: infringement of the human right to water. The denial of water to Palestinians has never been classified in this way, however.

The war in Gaza in summer 2014, known as Operation Protective Edge, worsened the water crisis and highlighted the extent of the problem. It is important to note, however, that the issues of virtually non-existent water access and unsafe water quality are by no means new for the people of Gaza. Before the initiation of Operation Protective Edge, running water was available to only 25 percent of households on a daily basis in Gaza, and Gazans received this water for only six to eight hours at a time.

In the West Bank, diversion of water resources to settlements leaves approximately 50,000 Palestinians with a quantity equal to only the minimum amount that the World Health Organization recommends for short-term survival in an emergency situation. Furthermore, although only three percent of the Jordan River is located within Israel’s pre-1967 borders, Israel controls the majority of its water, and those in the West Bank do not have any access to it.

children with pump and water containers
Children from Kofor Qaddoum village, east of West Bank city of Qalqilia, take water from a reservoir after their water supply was cut off in August 2006. Photo Credit: Khaleel Reash/MaanImages

This summer will be my second research trip to Palestine and Israel. When I was there this past January, I conducted interviews in the West Bank to learn the perspectives of civilians and nonprofit workers regarding the water crisis and its daily effects. This summer, I plan to continue this research and extend my scope to include how limited access to resources including electricity impacts Palestinians with Israeli citizenship living inside Israel as well.

My host organization, Mada al-Carmel, based in the city of Haifa, works to analyze social and political issues facing Palestinians, “with particular attention to Palestinians within Israel’s 1948 boundaries.” I am extremely excited to both contribute to and learn from their research, and to expand the existing aspects of my research project while also venturing into new and challenging terrain.

The Fight for $15 (& a Union) and the Struggle for Housing Rights in South Africa

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Robert Ascherman
Abahlali baseMjondolo (Shack Dwellers) Movement South Africa
South Africa

It’s March 31 at 11:30 PM and I’m staring at a blank white box. I probably should have started this blog much earlier, but organizing and being a student has just been so intense. This summer in South Africa with Abahlali baseMjondolo (Shack Dwellers) Movement seems like a far cry from now because of my involvement with several campaigns: Truth for America: How Teach for America is Ruining Public Education; the first ever International Campus Worker Solidarity campaign, organized by United Students Against Sweatshops; the student debt movement, organized by NYU Student Labor Action Movement (SLAM); and Fight for $15.

There is not an immediately clear connection for most folks between climate justice and advocating for $15 and a union. The conversation I had with an organizer from NYU Divest, which demands NYU’s divestment from the fossil fuel industry, presses against my mind like a heavy weight. Using the language of the Black Lives Matter movement, I said, “Let’s have a rally and speak out inside a McDonald’s while protesting, ‘We can’t breathe on $7.25,’ and then go to NYU protesting, ‘We can’t breathe without climate justice.’”

I wanted this first blog post to be about my understanding of human rights and my approach to upholding them, and this sounds like exactly the right thing to say.

Lives matter. Lives matter more than profit. Lives matter here in America for teachers, for students, and for everyone without $15 and a union, just as they do in the Persian Gulf and just as they do in South Africa, where people struggle for housing rights.

Lives matter more than anything, and no one should be poor (the state of living without the material goods necessary to survive), but we are never going to win the global struggle for human rights if we’re all divided into our little single-focus organizations. Justice will only be achieved if we can unite across all lines of divisions and form a broad, mass-based movement to demand the end of all injustices.

Indeed, Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King set the road ahead of us when he stated the following:

“The dispossessed of this nation—the poor, both white and Negro—live in a cruelly unjust society. They must organize a revolution against that injustice, not against the lives of the persons who are their fellow citizens but against the structures through which the society is refusing to take means which have been called for, and which are at hand, to lift the load of poverty. The only real revolutionar[ies], people say, [are those] who ha[ve] nothing to lose. There are millions of poor people in this country who have very little, or even nothing, to lose. If they can be helped to take action together, they will do so with a freedom and a power that will be a new and unsettling force in our complacent national life.”