NYU Gallatin Global Fellowship in Human Rights Blog

2021 Fellows

From Micro to Macro: How Perspective Can Impact Policy

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Madeline Cohodes /
Bellevue Hospital Program for Survivors of Torture / 
New York, USA /

It has officially been one year since I began interning at Bellevue PSOT. Throughout this time, I have worked on a variety of operations projects, many of which have been focused on assisting our client base during the COVID-19 pandemic. Coincidentally, as my fellowship began this summer, PSOT was also placed in a new position as our executive director, Dr. Hawthorne Smith, was elected president of the National Consortium of Torture Treatment Providers. This allowed us to work on national-level research projects along with policy and advocacy efforts.

So far, the topic that has interested me the most is the confluence of research and policy/advocacy. In order to effectively promote policy to legislators and community leaders, data on the subject is typically required. Therefore, it takes plenty of conversations to decide what needs to researched and how that can be repurposed as a policy tool. For instance, a current priority is expanding the U.S. government’s definition of torture to include survivors of sexual and gender-based violence, those who suffer torture related to LGBTQI identities, and those who experienced gang-related torture.

Compiling data on the number of of our clients who fit these categories is the first step in the arduous process of convincing the U.S. government to change its policy. However, with this fairly simple structure of obtaining data and using it for advocacy, the individual needs of survivors can be overlooked. Often mentioned is how to transfer information into the hands of survivors so it may be used not only for national platforms but also in local communities.

While change on the federal level can sound more important and impactful when working in large human rights organizations, it seems prudent to think about how the microcosm of each NCTTP clinic can also benefit from this research. For example, having a clear demographic summary of a clinic population could assist directors in reaching out to marginalized groups in their local community that may not be accessing services. Or, it could provide them with the incentive to strengthen ties with community groups of their most-served populations in order to reach anyone that may be hesitant about joining or just unaware of the program. Either way, having a vast array of readily available information can have a variety of benefits.

Research and data collection aren’t typically buzzwords in the human rights field. Yet, my year so far at PSOT has shown me that when used correctly, there are infinite ways to improve not only the program’s operations but also assist individual clients. Whether that’s working on a macro or a micro scale, the intersection of research and policy/advocacy has become a surprisingly critical facet of my daily work at the Program. And as for national-level outreach, we can only keep trying with the confidence that our voices (and data) will be heard.

Human Rights for Freedom of Expression in Authoritarian Contexts

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A. O. /
 

Throughout my past three years at New York University Abu Dhabi, studying both film and social research and public policy, I have become increasingly interested in examining issues of national identity, collective memory, and the use of law in the MENA region. This summer, I will be interning with the Arab Reform Initiative (ARI) with a research focus on freedom of expression in recent years, looking at the role of law, framing, and the disenfranchisement of human rights groups in justifying government violations.

Using an international human rights framework, the current transgressions on freedom of expression in the MENA region can be viewed most clearly as violations of Articles 19 and 20 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (the right to freedom of expression and opinion and freedom of association, respectively). Still, restrictions on freedom of expression–which range from legal justifications for censorship, state control of the media, and a pattern of arbitrary arrests facilitated by a perpetual state of emergency–threaten more than just the right to freedom of expression itself. Such violations are part of a broader, intentional system of authoritarian rule which penalizes all attempts at political participation or opposition and are central to reinforcing the absolute nature of state power.

How such violations can exist within an international human rights framework, and the value of such a framework in articulating social change, are the questions driving my project. In posing them, I hope to express the limited potential of invoking a human rights framework in the MENA context when fighting for freedom of speech, emphasizing the issues posed by international interests, the perceived threat of terrorism and emphasis on “national security,” skepticism surrounding NGOs, and the absolute nature of state sovereignty and impunity.

Conceptions of the State in Spanish Social Movements

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Graciela Blandon /
Andalusian Association for Human Rights /
Cadiz, Spain /

Part of my interest in Spain as a site of study is the unique relationship between the country’s social movements and its state. Spanish activist groups, including those in the field of human rights, are constantly grappling with their relationship to the state as a key actor. Either demands are directed at it, movement candidates vie for positions as officials, or groups opt to reject the state and international bodies made up of states as an avenue for change outright. Spain is distinct in that the debate on how to relate to the state and its institutions is foregrounded by the memory of the 15-M movement.

Organizers at the Andalusian Association for Human Rights tell me that the 15-M movement against austerity in Spain coalesced outraged populations suffering from the 2008-2014 Spanish financial crisis. A key feature of 15-M was its commitment towards autonomous organizing. 15-M was highly critical of representative democracy and opted instead for anti-institutional grassroots mobilization. However, the energy of 15-M took an electoral turn with the emergence of the Podemos party, which claimed to be the means through which a futile endeavor could gain real power while not betraying participatory politics. Podemos advocates were accused of betraying the movement in favor of reformism while defectors from the party line were characterized as idealists removed from mass politics. 

APDHA does not do any electoral work, but organizers’ conception of state institutions as a means to effect change dictates the approach the organization takes in addressing a wide range of human rights-related issues. So far, I’ve found that organizers have a strong commitment to respecting the ideal of 15-M but opt for legal and academic approaches to human rights matters. 15-M, on the other hand, was initially characterized by occupations and other forms of direct action. 

I am reminded of NYU Professor Sophie Gonick’s work on synthesizing different approaches to community organizing in Spain. She identifies two strands of activism in the Spanish housing movement (which is currently an area of focus for APDHA Cadiz): radical autonomy and agonistic engagement. Radical autonomy holds that inherent corruption of the state cannot be surpassed by even the most committed organizers; all action must explicitly refuse institutional support and cultivate autonomous urban spaces instead. Because the state reproduces capitalist exploitation, it is incompatible with the objectives of human rights movements. Agonistic engagement, on the other hand, legitimates the state by engaging in its institutions to “safeguard endangered forms of social reproduction, such as universal healthcare.” Agonistic engagement “seeks to create openings and opportunities within the existing political order and views conflict as a productive site of action and advancement,” in Gonick’s words.

masked people sitting at a large desk with laptops
APDHA organizers work on the Guia de Extranjeria report

These positions are often overlapping. Gonick argues that agonistic engagement and radical autonomy are reconcilable if we move past viewing them as binaries on opposite ends of a spectrum. When the schools of thought converge in political imaginaries, transformative synthesis unites disparate groups. Gonick describes how eviction blockers united with those litigating home ownership cases against the shared threat of demobilization from the state. I see a similar synthesis emerging in Cadiz’s APDHA. The academic and legal work of the organizers is most effective when amplified by protests, demonstrations, and teach-ins in the community. They thus create an alternative mode of political engagement through their interactions.

Pride with a Purpose

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Matthew Solomon /
OutRight Action International/
New York, NY /

My name is Matthew Solomon and I am an MA candidate at Gallatin pursuing a concentration in Queer human rights discourse. My studies consist of examining the efficacy of communications strategies when advocating for Queer rights on the global stage, along with the adverse impact that neocolonial rhetoric has on Queer liberation. The root of my research examines the tendency for Western NGOs and nations to frame Queer human rights in a way that reinforces colonial and racist stereotypes, and examines as well nations that do not conform to the neoliberal conception of Queer liberation regarding law, marriage equality, military inclusion, and the like.

This is why I am overjoyed at the opportunity to work as a communications intern with OutRight Action International, the only LGBTIQ NGO with permanent consultant status at the UN. In this capacity, I will assist the communications team with drafting press releases, social media posts, blog posts, opinion pieces, and other such documents. I will gain valuable insight as to how the organization considers language, rhetoric, and the impact that their framing has on the international environment when Queer rights are discussed.

I have been able to start early as they prepare for their Pride with a Purpose campaign. This campaign is an effort to acknowledge the activist roots of Pride, moving past corporate-sponsored parades and towards corporate-sponsored good. This seems like an oxymoron, and maybe it is. However, while normal Pride takes corporate money from organizations that are quite queerphobic, OutRight has a position in their development office designed to explicitly vet the organizations that they take money from. The rest of their funding comes from small-dollar donations.

My first task was to collect a series of stories from recipients of their COVID-19 emergency relief fund and create a narrative statement that captures the impacts of the grant on their lives. I was instructed to draft this narrative with sensitivity to their lived experiences, to ensure that they retain their agency and autonomy, while at the same time showcasing the importance of the fund (presumably to attract more donations). While the idea of keeping donors in mind may seem off-putting for the work of human rights, reading the stories and learning how the fund really saved some people when their government skipped them over while distributing resources, I was able to find the importance and necessity of the work.

In Defense Of Passion (and Abolition)

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Ian Partman /
Survived and Punished /
New York, USA /

The summer before entering sixth grade, I watched from my living room as George Zimmerman was acquitted of all charges for his murder of Trayvon Martin. Every summer after, in a strange succession, I watched as more and more black people were executed at the hands of the police, and, perhaps more brutally, as those police officers received little more than slaps on the wrist for their extra-judicial murders.

Feeling almost incapacitated by the senseless state violence (which I would later come to understand as the very condition of our white supremacist normal), I turned to books, films, photos–anything I could get my hands on that would give me a sliver of understanding. As these summers swelled, and with them, protests, riots, and uprisings, so did my knowledge.

Now it feels difficult to define precisely when, but at some point, I began to recognize the fundamental contradictions of the state apparatus that many of us term the “prison-industrial complex.” It was no longer lost on me that the very same system that let police officers indiscriminately kill and target black people with impunity was the same system that disproportionately and indiscriminately incarcerated black people. These contradictions angered me, and it was with this rage, which I couldn’t describe or fully make sense of, that I became an activist.

So, let me rephrase: every summer after, in a strange succession, my passion for a world better and greater than the one given to me and to other black people around the world, in the duress of our white-supremacist normal, grew stronger and stronger. It is precisely this passion which has led me to the Gallatin Global Fellowship in Human Rights, and this passion illuminates my summer project.

As a Human Rights Fellow, I will be working with Survived & Punished NY, a nonprofit organization that campaigns and organizes for the abolition of custodial sentences for victims of sexual violence, who were incarcerated for “failure to protect,” self-defense, and other forms of criminalization aimed at caging human beings for their attempts at survival. At Survived & Punished, I will be working to build communication networks between our volunteers, legal assistants, and currently incarcerated people. I will work directly with the mass commutations team to advocate for the release of prisoners in the state of New York.

I will also provide research and other assistance for our ongoing collaborations with human rights programs, law clinics, and other prison and police abolitionist organizations in the Americas. Further, I will conduct individual research on sexual and domestic violence within what I call the “carceral apparatus,” researching transformative justice strategies and assisting another nonprofit, Project NIA.

ribbon reading "survived" linked to handcuff reading "and punished"

As it stands, abolition is an impossible project. Many of us have internalized the belief that prisons and police–and the whole of our white supremacist normal–is all that there is. Abolition, thus, is steadfastly utopian, the work of the future. Perhaps for many of us who are vulnerable and proximate to state violence, the utopian is our only claim to the world.

Human Rights on the Border

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Graciela Blandon /
Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos de Andalucía (APDHA) /
Cadiz, Spain /

Four years ago, four bodies were recovered off the coast of Cadiz, a small island on Spain’s southern border. The bodies belonged to North African migrants seeking asylum in Europe. The port city of Cadiz has a long history of transnational movement as one of the oldest inhabited European cities, serving as Christopher Columbus’s preferred point of departure in the sixteenth century and as an arrival hub for more than 1,500 African migrants and refugees in 2018.

Ill-equipped to deal with migratory influxes, the state deferred responsibility for those arriving in Cadiz to either police or local humanitarian organizations. The Cadiz delegation of the Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos de Andalucía (APDHA) has been at the forefront of the “crisis” while managing a varied portfolio of intersecting human rights advocacy work. This summer, I will be interning with the APDHA as a Gallatin Global Fellow in Human Rights and as a fellow borderlander native to El Paso, Texas.

The APDHA was founded on the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and operates with four tenets. The first is awareness of citizenship. Through community-based pedagogy, the APDHA strives to train citizens in the values of a human rights framework. The second is social reporting, wherein the collective identifies human rights violations and strategizes ways to apply political pressure through the third tenet: elaboration of alternatives. Finally, the APDHA provides support and solidarity for those suffering the subversion of their rights.

For three months, I will assist with the APDHA’s organizing efforts. Among my tasks will be constructing project proposals, managing working groups, writing communiques, and updating the website’s content and digital assets in English and Spanish. I’m especially excited to aid in the creation and distribution of the APDHA’s annual report on the state of human rights on the southern border of Spain. Through that project, which is currently being crowdfunded, the organization intends to analyze the evolution of migratory fluxes and the consequences of political changes on the lives and rights of migrants, expose systemic vulnerabilities in the human rights framework, and denounce the entrepreneurial dimension of the border. The report is referred to by national and international media, institutions, and research organizations.

At the same time, I will be embarking on my own intellectual quest, if you will, by interrogating the positionality of the APDHA’s approach to advocacy via their foundational tenets. I’m particularly interested in how the APDHA’s work upholds or rejects state-making projects and normative assumptions about human rights while negotiating community-based organizing with its status as a region-wide NGO. I will ask questions such as the following:

  • How do border populaces define their own sovereignty?
  • What is the role of human rights organizations in integrating the migrant as one of the first points of contact?
  • What identities are created or destroyed due to living in a peripheral community, and how are they affected by national identity, Europeanisation, and the idea of citizenship?

I hope that this work will yield insights into the efficacy of the APDHA’s organizing strategies, theories of political mass participation, and relationships to relevant institutions.

Taking a Stand for Talibés

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Tabara Sy /
Tostan /
Dakar, Senegal /

As a Senegalese woman living in America, I have seen, witnessed, and been the victim of a large spectrum of human rights violations. Coming to NYU as a freshman, I decided to focus my study on social and cultural analysis throughout the African diaspora, encompassing the intersectionalities of politics, economics, education, socialization, etc. 

Since my youth, I constantly noticed and was intrigued by the young orphaned children filling the streets of Dakar, Senegal. In exchange for a place to stay in Quranic schools (daaras), where they are supervised by a Quranic teacher, these children, called talibés, are required to collect money, grains, food, sugar, etc., to bring back to the teacher. If they do not reach their quota, they are subjected to brutal beatings and other more extreme abuse by the Quranic leaders. 

While I was born in the United States, I grew up living between both New York and Dakar. As an insider and outsider to Senegalese culture, the daily lives of those young boys never sat right with me. I understand that because it is so common and unfortunately part of the life in Dakar, not enough people take a stance against it or go out of their way to help talibés.

In my work with the non-governmental organization, Tostan Dignity For All, I plan to both bring more awareness and pose more solutions to this issue. One of the biggest projects that Tostan has taken on is their Community Empowerment Program (CEP), their way of bringing together communities with the help of local facilitators in several villages throughout Senegal. This summer, I will help organize these community-based programs and push important discussions to the forefront.

Change starts with locals themselves and their ability to form and transform communities. I can’t wait to witness and participate in that change this summer with Tostan!

Between al Nakba and Intifada

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Diya Moushahwar /
Mada al Carmel Arab Center for Social Research /
Haifa, Palestine / 

I write this in the wake of the ceasefire in Palestine (1948 boundaries) and the occupied territories, following eleven long days of the State of Israel’s bombing of Gaza. More than 250 people have been murdered, and thousands were injured. According to the UN, more than 74,000 Palestinians are now homeless.

Residential buildings and international media offices were affected, along with hospitals and the Gaza Health Ministry. Doctors and patients were impacted as well, including the murder of 11 children seeking care for trauma with their families.

Unsurprisingly, the ceasefire has not ended Israeli state-sponsored repression of Palestinians. Within hours, Israeli settlers and police attacked worshipers at Al Aqsa, while protesters were targeted with mass arrests.

man photographing and people looking at bombed building
The primary coronavirus laboratory in Gaza destroyed by an Israeli airstrike. Photo credit: Middle East Eye/Mohammed al-Hajjar.

In the face of this mass death and destruction, there is room for hope. Palestinian resistance these last few weeks has been historic, including amongst Sheikh Jarrah residents, who continue to fight against their forced displacement. Palestinians have organized their first general strike since 1936.

Additionally, hundreds of thousands of people have protested in solidarity with Palestinians across the globe, including an Italian port workers union and the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union. Critically, the conversation within U.S. empire and abroad is shifting: we are moving from a narrative of conflict to an analysis of settler-colonialism, occupation, and apartheid. People who live in the U.S. are realizing what the annual four billion dollars of aid to Israel pays for. 

women holding protest signs
Protesters take the historic Palestinian general strike to the streets of Ramallah. Photo credit: AP/Nasser Nasser.

From medical neutrality to these mass debilitating events, the Israeli state has continued to violate Palestinians’ human right to health. In my activist work, I fight in solidarity for a free Palestine and for liberation everywhere. In my academic work, I aim to historicize and politicize science, medicine, and care, examining how harm is reproduced and examining what revolutionary care looks like.

In the coming weeks, I will work with Mada al Carmel, an organization whose colleagues produce absolutely necessary social research to advance Palestinian human rights. As an intern at Mada, I will write and edit research reports, write grant reports and proposals, conduct international public relations and outreach, maintain and update the organization’s English-language website, and assist with research. At Mada, I hope to learn intimately how to work in solidarity with people on the ground.

PSOT: A Multifaceted Approach To Care

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Madeline Cohodes /
Bellevue Hospital Program for Survivors of Torture / 
New York, USA

My name is Madeline Cohodes and I have just finished my third year as a dual-degree BA/MPH student. My undergraduate Gallatin concentration focuses on extrapolating issues found in healthcare to broader societal contexts, and my master’s concentration is in public health policy. 

This summer, I will continue my current internship at the Bellevue Program for Survivors of Torture (PSOT), a nonprofit that supports people affected by torture, a human rights violation. Torture can inflict not only physical but psychological and emotional pain, and PSOT works with immigrant and refugee communities to provide medical, social, legal, and mental health services. The program’s medical/mental health components include a multifaceted combination of primary care and referrals to trauma-informed therapists, psychiatrists, and group therapy.

All of these services work to restore and improve our clients’ health. More broadly, the services address issues beyond basic medical assistance, such as how to achieve a stable immigration status, adequate housing, and an overarching sense of safety. Such things are necessary for most people to feel healthy mentally, or at least feel secure enough to focus on their mental health. Furthermore, fiscal stability is necessary in the context of the American healthcare system to gain access to non-emergency care.

PSOT assists in stabilizing these critical needs and providing further assistance with clients’ needs. The work my colleagues and I do at PSOT helps to ensure that the human right to health encompasses all aspects of wellbeing.

As the operations and development intern at PSOT, I will continue this summer to assist clients with scheduling appointments in all of these areas. I will also refer clients to grants that compensate people impacted by COVID-19 and will monitor new clients’ cases so that I can connect them to necessary resources. Additionally, I will assist with grant writing and research projects.

“Double Emergency”: Food Sovereignty and Structural Violence during a Pandemic

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Lucas McKinnon / 
United Nations Development Program Accelerator Labs /
Asunción, Paraguay / 

My name is Lucas McKinnon. I am a second-year MPH candidate with an emphasis on the UN SDGs. Before this, I worked in public health as a food systems specialist in Hawai’i and with indigenous migrant farm workers in California’s Central Valley. I am interested in international food sovereignty movements, indigenous rights, women farmer’s rights, applied agroecology, and preventive public health. 

This summer I will work as a research assistant with the UNDP Accelerator Labs in Asuncion, Paraguay. Under the direction of Dr. Setrini, I will aid the solutions mapping team with a number of ongoing social innovation projects related to food sovereignty, women’s rights, and indigenous land rights. This interdisciplinary work implicates a variety of human rights issues, ranging from the right to food, health, land, and unencumbered movement. 

police facing people across a plowed field
Police Guarding Soybean Fields

I began work for the UNDP this March, composing a number of preliminary blog posts about Moiru, a community social innovation challenge that was initiated during the summer of last year. Moiru (which means “community” in the language Guarani) is a social innovation grant challenge wherein community organizations across the country were asked to apply for funding for projects specifically related to agroecological innovation, women’s empowerment, gender equity, and skill training.

Our work this summer will center on four finalist organizations: Semillas Nativas, Semilla Roga, Mbokaja Poty, and Guerilla Verde. These organizations are all women-led community organizations working to protect indigenous seed varieties, promote agroecological training, and improve food security in their respective regions.

group of masked people posed under a tree
Moiru Finalist, Semillas Nativas

For indigenous communities in Paraguay, the current situation is dire. Many have found themselves having a “double emergency,”  struggling to cope with the failure of the government and public health institutions to adequately respond to the pandemic, while fighting to rectify historical legacies of bodily, agribiopolitical, and structural violence perpetrated against indigenous and campesino groups. Our work is situated at this inflection point.

Ultimately, it is my hope that throughout my internship, I will constantly reevaluate my role, skeptical of my function in relation to technological fetishization, NGO-ization, and professionalism replacing potentially liberatory social movements. Although I may not be able to work in-country, I will be supporting tangible change through indigenous-led organizations working from las semillas to la Ley.