NYU Gallatin Global Fellowship in Human Rights Blog

Sexual Health Education in Guatemala

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Alexandra Kamler
Antigua, Guatemala

Last time I wrote, I had just sent the director of INVAL, Magali Rosales Garcia the sexual health curriculum that Alex, Andrea, and I had created for the students. On Monday I sent it, on Tuesday I followed up, and on Wednesday when I had yet to hear anything, we went to INVAL to speak with the director. It seems much easier to just walk in and ask to speak with a director of a high school here than it would be in the United States. Appointments do not seem as necessary and email correspondence has not proven to be the best method of communication. Showing up seems to work best. Magali apologized for not returning our emails; she was swamped with restructuring classes. Four of her teachers were suspended. INVAL is a public school, funded by the government. Classes are separated in two parts, the morning classes, and afternoon classes. Students either attend classes in the morning or afternoon. There are 16 sections of students that attend morning classes. There are between 25 and 50 students in each class. Each day the students attending the morning classes have 8 classes of 35 minutes each. They start their days at 7:30 and end at 12:30. Magali told us that she had 4 teachers suspended; there are 4 class slots where she does not have anything for her students to do. There are not sufficient resources or number of teachers to fill the slots. How perfect we just happened to want to do a project.

After glancing over the curriculum, Magali informed us that none of this information would be new to her students but she didn’t see any reason why we should not do this project. She told us that APROFAM had already visited the students and given them workshops on sexual health and so we should not go into the classroom thinking the students were ignorant about this information or that they were ill informed. Rather, they were already well educated on all of these topics. Magali finished the meeting letting us know that our first class would be the following morning at 7:30 a.m. and we would be teaching students between the ages of 11 and 18. She also mentioned we should be teaching all the students the same information but to make sure it is age appropriate. Sure, not a problem Director.
On Thursday Alex, Andrea, and I arrived at 6:45 a.m. with two huge water jugs full of smoothies, 300 ham and cheese sandwiches, and 15 bags of cookies. That day we taught straight from 7:30 through 12:30 and saw 4 different classes, each for 2 sections of 35 minutes each. Our first class with each section starts slow as we do an activity to get to know each other and then move on to go through the parts and functions of the reproductive systems of males and females. We go over the changes that occur during puberty, giving particular attention to what happens during menstruation, and then we move on to how a woman gets pregnant and an activity that has to do with common myths regarding pregnancy prevention. We have a question box where each student is requested to write something to put in the box. It is anonymous and if we have time, we read through and answer the questions. If our time is up, we write up responses that night and print out sheets for the students to take the next day.

To the director’s surprise, the students are not as well informed as she had once thought. I remember first having sexual health classes in the third grade, then again in the sixth and in my high school, we had a human development class. I am still learning all there is about sexual health so it is understandable that the students do not remember every detail from the 15-minute presentation by APROFAM (Association for the well-being of the family in Guatemala) they had once last year. Some say that a person has to learn something six times before they really grasp onto the information.
The students engage with us and seem extremely open to the information that we are presenting. All the students have a lot of questions, apart from the 13-year-old boys who look more like seven-year-old boys and sit in silence for the first twenty minutes of the class with eyes wide and mouths open as we go over the anatomically correct pictures of the female and male reproductive systems. The students seem to have heard many popular phrases or names of diseases and myths from friends, family, and the media but are not exactly sure what they all mean when asked about them later on. We joke and cover the information, answering questions along the way hoping to clarify the different options students have in regards to protecting themselves if they choose to have sexual relationships. We pass out snacks and ask them to call us by our first names, hoping to make it a more informal and comfortable atmosphere. As the students file out of the door to say goodbye, kissing us on the cheek, one student stays behind and then another. The first asks me what the likelihood is that he has HIV if his mother has something called AIDS. He remembered us talking about the relationship between the two earlier in class and wants to know more. Another girl lags behind and waits for me to finish answering his questions before she asks me how she can give herself an abortion.

And suddenly the class is no longer as light-hearted. It has stopped being a lesson of hypothetical situations and theoretical ways in which to care for yourself. I am teaching sexual health education in a catholic country where abortion is illegal and condoms are not easily accessible, particularly for adolescents who feel ashamed to go in and ask the pharmacist who just so happens to know everyone in their community. These kids attend a school where the teachers are no shows and where I can have them for another 35-minute section if we have more information to cover. No, no math today- more sexual health education, the math teacher is sick. Apparently, the kids that attend this school are lucky to be there and most likely will start working after they graduate. Their families do not have the funds to pay for the 2 years of specialized school that comes after colegio and before the University. Many factors are just collapsing onto each other. It suddenly seems ironic that I am trying to teach these students how to care for themselves in a school that does not have potable water for them to drink. The government also thought that a good budget cut was toilet paper so for the 13 year old girl who just got her period, she better hope that her friends brought packets with them for her to use. When Alex and I walk around the school we see more people working in the office than in the classrooms and I wonder what is going on. INVAL is apparently one of the largest public institutes for kids in Guatemala. Since our teaching started, I have learned that looking at health, as a human right is necessary, particularly in finding ways to have information regarding health accessible to young people. I also think that as important as I believe sexual health to be in promoting and providing information so students can choose the options they feel are best for their own lives, there are many foundational aspects that need to be looked at in regards to health in this high school before we get to condoms and spermicide. For example, there needs to be soap in the bathroom, toilet paper, and drinking water. When I think of NYU these are the very basic items that the school supplies. But on the other hand, these students are lucky in the grander scheme of things. They get to attend school. They are not working in the dump where landslides kill people after heavy rains and vulture’s circles high above. These kids do not have to clothe every part of their body to shield it from the sun; sunglasses to protect their eyes from particles of trash, bandanas over their nose and mouth so they do not breath in the feces wrapped in toilet paper. The kids in INVAL most likely have at least one family member and can afford to not work in the morning. So relatively speaking in relation to the other children their age, who are only an hour bus ride away working in the dump, the students of INVAL are lucky to get anything. However, this is obviously problematic. This is exactly the mentality that permits a government to get away with not paying its teachers, which in turn makes them not want to show up which clearly affects the quality of education that the students receive. I am learning a lot about the students and even more about the interconnectedness of the government, economy, education, and health of the people of Guatemala. I am trying to unpack it all, understand how the different parts function, and depend on one another more clearly. And until the suspended teachers return to teach, Alex, Andrea, and I will be at INVAL learning and answering questions from the ‘anonymous questions box.’.

Land-Grabbing; Problems and Resolutions

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Mari Haraldsson
Battambang Province, Cambodia
Parliament Member Mu Sochua

On my first day at the office in Phnom Penh one of the staff members came in and asked me to report on a case of land-grabbing that she witnessed on her way to work that morning. At 8 am a woman and her family woke up to over one hundred police officers surrounding her home in Phom Penh Commune Sen Sok District. Suddenly a group of workers broke into her home and started demolishing the house.

There are three families occupying three separate houses situated next to each other. Each of the three houses has now been destroyed—without warning, without legal permission. Spending time here in Cambodia for the past 2 months has made it clear that ‘legal permission’ has little authority—in fact, it is often completely disregarded by the authority figures.
The owner of one of the houses is a vendor, and her husband is a teacher. They have lived in the house since 1992, when they purchased the land. She has been involved with an unfinished court case regarding the property; however, the court ordered protection over her house, ensuring that no one would destroy or take over her home for the time being.

Not only was she given no warning of the eviction, but now her home has collapsed as well. As she answered reporters about her situation, her house was being torn down behind her. She asks the government, “Why didn’t you inform us before destroying our house?”

Five people in the house protested the action and tried to stop it. All of them have now been arrested. This is only one of many cases of illegal forced evictions happening in the area.

My first reaction was to ask: if the court explicitly did not allow for the destruction of these houses, how could this have happened?

That question now seems so naïve.

State violence against women is a continuation of war in time of peace. As Sochua said when we discussed this, “When the court system is colluding with the state to maintain the culture of impunity, the entire system of governance has collapsed. We need to report and tell the truth. Empowerment of victims is to not let the injustice be untold.”

More recently, in Battambang, I was taken to see a public space that has been grabbed by a CPP village chief. Among several rice paddies and farmland there is a small pond from which the farmers pump water. The pond has been set aside as public property—for everyone to use freely. The village chief, however, has decided to build a fence around it to keep farmers from accessing the water. He has been using it for him and his family, and is currently looking for the highest bidder to sell the pond to. Since he is a CPP leader, and thus a part of the majority, the SRP leaders in the district are unable to do anything. His crime is being supported and protected by the other CPP members.

We had a meeting for all the opposition party leaders of the district to try and figure out how to solve this problem. The impoverished farmers are unable to properly tend their crops because of this situation and it is negatively impacting their livelihood in a very tangible, direct way.

After much discussion and visiting the site, the leaders have decided to write up a report to the national leaders with the hope that there will be an appropriate response. CPP members are the majority at the national level too, of course. After all, they are the ruling party.

Hopefully this will be resolved soon. Unfortunately, it is overwhelming how much of this is happening at various degrees of severity all over the country. Again, the violators are the ones who are supposed to, who have even been elected to, protect these people and their basic rights.

On a brighter note, the land-grabbing case I wrote about in my first post has been resolved!!! I spoke with Sochua over dinner a few nights ago and she said that the farmers have not contacted her or reported any issues since we went to the police officer and had that “trial.” The resolutions they came to have actually been enforced so far, which is extremely encouraging.
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Unfortunately I have fallen ill and must return to the States to see a doctor. I have met with all of the leaders, however, and we have made plans so that I will be able to continue my work while I’m in New York. Thank God for skype and 3G USBs! I will still give leadership trainings with a translator.

There are many stories left to share, so I will be keeping up with this blog. I took a break while I was bedridden with a 104.5 fever, but now I’m feeling well enough to document what has been happening here. I fly home on Wednesday and I will start my medical tests on Thursday. Hopefully they will all go well! I look forward to good health. I will definitely write about the experience of being a privileged foreigner with access to healthcare—it has been a truly mind-boggling experience, one that has been humbling, confusing, and significant for my personal growth.

Take good care,
Mari

Rushing towards the future: redefining development in Madagascar

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Malaika Neri
Ambatondrazaka, Madagascar
OTIV Alaotra Mangoro

The stars are the most beautiful. Big, gleaming orbs of light that has travelled across the universe shine down, brightening a broad night in a small town amidst rice paddies and fields of green beans.

They are bright, those stars, but I can’t see them in New York City because we’re all plugged in, connected yet disconnected.

My fingers hover over the keyboard, unsure how to describe this experience. Unsure how to explain the amalgamation of frustration and contentment.
Because this is a slow island. Camions (Quebecois for big trucks) rumble slowly over mud roads strewn with pebbles. And everywhere, there is bevuvka, the endless poussière that rises up from the red African soil to coat cars, clothes, trees and nostrils with a layer of brown dust.

People walk slowly, ambling to work at five in the morning, and ambling home as the sun sets around five in the evening, exposing a blood-orange crease in the belly of this big, big sky. At my office, a bastion of bureaucracy in a town full of small and medium enterprises (SMEs – certainly one of my favourite acronyms), everyone sits down to work at seven-thirty or eight a.m., but jumps out of their seats once an hour for a pose.

Often, I’m irritated by the passivity. The total disregard for a need to work hard to gagner l’argent, or make a living. The Malagasy seem to amble through life, not perturbed in the least by a desire to improve their country, or province, or city, or even, fokontany, or neighbourhood.

I came to Madagascar to learn about economic development, to learn how life can be better for the family of eight who live in a wooden shack measuring seven feet by six, and pays for tomorrow with the income they earn today, as millions do on this island that has ballooned to a population of twenty million since independence from France in 1965, but remains “poor,” according to World Bank statistics, with per capita income hovering slightly about $250 per year. It is very much a tany an-dalam-pandrosoana – a country on the road to development – something that Kofi and Barack would surely earmark as an essential human right. I thought working at OTIV (a microfinance started with World Bank funds and technical help from the Canadian aid organization, Développement International Desjardins (DID) – a savings and loan association (SLA, in financial lingo) consisting primarily of agriculteurs (farmers) would teach me about development, and microfinance as a tool in its pursuit.

But I’m learning less about development as defined by Millenium Development Goals (MDGs – not a favourite acronym, for sure) and more about fitivanana – what Westerners/Greeks call agape, what philosophers call ‘The Golden Rule,’ what Christians call The First Commandment. Loving your brother as you love yourself, stemming from fiavanana: the harmony at the base of Malagasy culture, and the reason they, unlike most “poor” countries on this continent, have not had a war in over fifty years.

“So many people come here, and they ask, Why are they not developed?!” recounted Miguel, a French conservation biologist I met during my first week here. “And then you look around, and you think, They’ll never be developed. But after you’ve been here for a while, you realize, they don’t want development.”

They don’t say “developing country” in French. They call it a ‘pays en voie du developpement,’ a country in need of development. It irritates me no end that the Malagasy don’t feel that way.

And on the flip side of the irritation is amazement. I’m speechless, riding a creaky Chinese bicycle through the calm of the rizières (rice fields), gaping when the sun exits its expert hiding spot behind a group of nuages, clouds that bring rain in December and only cold winds in July. I’m astounded to see groups of young, healthy, able-bodied men hanging out on the sidewalk, petra-petraka-ing their day away. The shock continues every time I enter the home of one of Ambatondrazaka’s wealthy families, every time I sit down with my own very wealthy host family to eat a meal of two different kinds of meat, more than most could afford, replete with gourmet Chinese mushrooms, on tablecloths purchased in Tana, the capital.

The shock sometimes becomes apathy when, every morning at a breakfast of Nesquik and pain malgache, I open The Elusive Quest for Growth, a tome by NYU’s very own William Easterly and part of my colloquium reading, that decries past approaches to development.

Because there’s still no blanket solution.

“We just don’t have enough capital,” said my boss, on my second day in Madagascar. “Everyone wants loans, and we don’t have enough épargnes, (savings accounts) to approve them all.”

In New York, an island swimming in tidal waves of cash, I never worry about a dearth of capital. Indeed, our infamous financial crisis of two years ago was the very result of too much disbursed too quickly. But here in Madagascar, after I’ve wiped the dust from my eyes, I continue to see poverty, bad roads, and one too many children with orange hairs that belie protein deficiencies.

“People are poor because they lack access to capital,” Donald Trump once chirped. And one would assume that granting people access to capital starts them on the path out of poverty. But, I’m learning, it isn’t that simple.

“Look around you!” cried one of OTIV’s chefs, on a recent trip to visit a caisse, or local bank, in Andilamena, a small town north of us renowned for its pierres précieuses, or gemstones. “Take a picture!” he gesticulated, pointing to a group of children and their mothers, from whom we were purchasing illegally-harvested charcoal briquettes. “See the poverty of Madagascar! Nous sommes pauvres!”

“Absolutely!” I felt like yelling back. “But so are millions of people in India and China and Albania and Mongolia!”

OTIV works to enable people to pull themselves out of poverty – what we define as the inability to pay for a child’s school tuition, the impossibility of affording a car, and the limitations on disposable income – by providing them with bootstraps: quite simply, capital, in the form of prets (loans) and tahiry (savings).

My knee-jerk reaction to the multiple descriptions of poverty in this green and fertile country has always been, try harder! Perhaps it’s due to an inculcated “pull yourselves up by the bootstraps” philosophy so venerated in America, but here, development has always been an idea brought in from the outside. And most Malagasy are habituated to outside help. This combines with a cultural passivity, bred in schools wherein students are taught to respond, “Oui Madame” instead of asking pointed questions, to produce a country that takes a very laid-back approach to the future, preferring to enjoy roasted misikita while swatting away the incessant flies, rather then worrying about national strategies de lutte contre la pauvreté.

But then, I find myself falling into the trap of blaming poor people for their own poverty. Multiple times a day, I want to grab the shoulders of the graphic dessinateur and marketing coordinatrice – colleagues with whom I’m trying to design a new marketing campaign for OTIV – and shake them up, ask them to be more creative, more innovative, to care more about their own organization.

“But you see, it’s like that,” sighed my host mother, one of the few I’ve met who has travelled à l’extérieur. “Here, when you find an office job, that’s it. You stay put. What else is there? And people just while away their time taking breaks, chatting and chatting. Then they complain that there’s too much work. It’s not like chez toi.”

No, it’s most certainly not what I’m used to, this lackadaisical lifestyle in which the music never stops, the laughter is frequent, babies are not an inconvenience, and Sundays are a day of rest. But I’m learning to suppress my desire to speed things up; I’m learning to appreciate that there’s always enough time for a second cup of tea, for another conversation, for another glass of freshly-pressed orange juice after lunch.

Because no one is in a hurry. No one is rushing toward development.

Interconnected rights and the gap between a good concept and its implementation

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Becky Asch
Nakuru, Kenya
Kenya National Alliance of Street Vendors and Informal Traders

Post taken from: http://beckyasch.wordpress.com/

Informal traders in Kenya face a cobweb of interconnected challenges on a daily basis that impact their jobs, housing, income, health, safety, family and security. While it is impossible to isolate these issues, if I had to give an overview of the major ones that stem directly from their informal status, it would include mistreatment by authorities (harassment, bribery, arbitrary arrest and detention), insufficient access to credit on fair terms, exclusion from city and town planning (no designated/legal areas for trade), and a lack of service provisions such as toilet facilities and clean water in their places of work. KENASVIT’s role is to bring together informal traders throughout the country as a trade union (although it is not legally recognized as such) to strengthen their voice and address some of these issues. The Alliance has a revolving loan fund that was dispersed after the post-election violence in 2007-08 to its urban alliances, in which loans are given out at a very low interest rate (5%) with the goal of helping traders restock and rebuild their businesses after the violence. KENASVIT also holds negotiation trainings for their urban alliances, in which members are taught how to approach local authorities with concerns or complaints and come to an agreement (in donor/development terms, “Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR)”). Urban alliances use these skills to pressure local authorities to include informal traders in urban planning, which facilitates better conditions of work (toilet facilities, clean water), and a reduction in harassment and other violations as these areas for trade are legally recognized.

It is in this context that I have been working on designing a paralegal training program for KENASVIT’s urban alliance management. Last week I went to Nairobi to meet with Kituo cha Sheria (roughly translates to Station of Law). Kituo is a pro bono law firm/legal empowerment organization. The purpose of the meeting was to propose a partnership between KENASVIT and Kituo, in which Kituo would carry out the paralegal certification training and other related activities. I’ve met with similar organizations, such as the Legal Resources Fund, but they charge an extremely high rate for their services. After a lot of research and correspondence with such firms, I found Kituo to be the perfect match for our goal. The meeting went incredibly well. They were very interested in our program and of course its sustainability (I can never escape that word). A few days later I got an email from the woman I had been in correspondence with accepting the partnership, and informing me that Kituo would be covering the cost of the training!… This is really great news for the program and even though it won’t be implemented before I leave I feel proud and relieved that the groundwork is laid out.

Essentially, the program will look like this: a few members of KENASVIT’s urban alliances from each region will attend a three-week intensive paralegal training program in Nairobi run by Kituo cha Sheria that focuses specifically on issues pertaining to informal traders. This includes harassment, bribery, arbitrary arrest, licensing, confiscation of property, areas for trade, fair hearings, service provisions (access to water and toilets, garbage collection, etc.), and negotiations with relevant authorities. The training will draw from the new constitution, primarily from the Bill of Rights (Chapter 4). Once the training is complete, the paralegals will return to their respective regions and make their knowledge accessible to their members. For instance, the paralegals will hold office hours at their management offices to provide legal advice to those whose rights have been violated. These complaints will be documented and hopefully can be used in future lobbying and negotiation efforts.

Furthermore, the paralegals will hold workshops to sensitize their members on what they have learned. Kituo cha Sheria will then hold “refresher” trainings for the paralegals, and will be available if the paralegals should need advice on how to handle a case. Kituo also has volunteer advocates (pro bono lawyers) around the country, and should a case be particularly significant in terms of setting a precedent for other informal traders, the advocates will take on the cases for free.

Of course, this program is not the silver bullet. Paralegals are not able to represent defendants in court. Even if they could, the court fees alone and time away from work are unaffordable for many traders. The judges are not necessarily willing to rule against askaris (police) or other municipal authorities, and these violations are still rampant. Furthermore, while the new constitution stipulates that defendants are entitled to free legal representation, the government avoids carrying out this responsibility by adding in clever wording (something along the lines of): “if grave injustice is likely to occur”. While people who work in this sector would argue that grave injustices are occurring if only from the overwhelming scale of these violations and the impunity that follows, some who are not so sympathetic could make a case that, while bribery or harassment is wrong, the actual violations themselves are not so serious. The fact is that the regularity of these violations (which, by the way, are violations of international law as well as the new constitution) wears down on informal traders as a sector, leaving them in a perpetually vulnerable position. This is not to downplay their agency and creativity in responding to and combatting this oppression; surely, we have seen (see my previous post) how Migori has been quite successful in this respect, as have other urban alliances. Rather I am trying to say that these responses are constructed and carried out under severe constraints, particularly legal and financial ones. However impressive this resistance may be, it is not something to celebrate, as it emerges and survives from the existence of this very oppression.

The day after the meeting with Kituo, I met up with a man who had been the facilitator at an urban forum in Nakuru a few weeks before. I was very interested in his projects and decided to spend the day with him to find out more about what he does. He ended up taking me to a microfinance institution that he partners with called KENA ROSCAS in Kayole, an impoverished area in Nairobi with a blooming informal sector. KENA ROSCAS was founded by a woman named Nancy Wanjera, who grew up in a slum in Nairobi, was sponsored to go to secondary school graduating at the top of her class, and was then able to attend university. I’ve always been quite skeptical of microfinance as a concept, mainly for two reasons. First, many of them charge an absurdly high interest rate (around 20% or higher), which causes the loan recipients to struggle to pay them back, and contradicts the purported basis for microfinance in the first place. Second, they don’t seem to provide an actual solution to the gap in access to credit. The latter criticism comes from my belief that many efforts that don’t get at the root of the problem merely make the whole system a little more tolerable and therefore perpetuate it, or perhaps worse: they are used as window dressing to avoid genuinely addressing a problem.

In any case, the KENA ROSCAS model made me question my generalized skepticism. The institution seems to fairly, creatively and adequately address the credit and business needs of the people living in Kayole. Before anyone can access a loan or start saving with the institution, they go through training in small business, and receive a passbook to keep track of their savings and balances. Once a group of five has saved their money with KENA ROSCAS for 8 weeks (at 200 KSh per week), a longer-term revolving loan (6 months-1 year) is dispersed to the group. They are allowed to take out 2.5 times what they have saved, and these revolving loans are incremental (they can never take out more than they can afford to pay back). The other kind of loan is an emergency loan, for instance when a stall owner needs to pay for a shipment that morning and doesn’t have the capital at that time. Those are either 5,000 or 10,000 KSh, the interest (10%) is higher than the revolving loans, and they are paid back quicker. For collateral, members document certain assets that they have (possibly a television, refrigerator, etc.), and KENA ROSCAS staff go to their residences to confirm this. The institution requires its members to use their savings to get various kinds of insurance (health, business and life). Finally, they are also trying to invest some of their profit into purchasing land to sell to youth living in slums at affordable rates and terms so that they can have land titles, which can serve as collateral among other things to be able to access credit. I guess what I learned is that, while many microfinance models seem to take advantage of people in need of credit and don’t address the root of the problem, if done honestly, with a deep understanding of people’s needs and conditions, and with the intention of sustaining (there’s that word again) and expanding a business instead of just making a quick profit, they can be really important and beneficial.

By the end of the weekend I was completely fried and happy to get back to Nakuru. But the week ahead of me was just as busy, minus the traveling. KENASVIT hosted meetings all week – of the Management Committee, the National Executive Committee – this meant that representatives from all over the country came into Nakuru, and the office was hectic! It was great because I hadn’t gotten to meet many of them, and those that I had gotten to meet I had a chance to see again. The meetings lasted all day for 4 days. It was really nice to hear about all of the issues each region is dealing with and the progress they have made. I also got a chance to share what I’ve done since coming to KENASVIT, particularly updating the management on the new developments in the paralegal program (and drinking LOTS of tea).

On Wednesday (the 29th), I took a break from the management meetings to meet with the Kenya Association of Motorcycle Owners and Drivers. I had met one of their board members at the urban forum a few weeks back and he invited me to attend one of their weekly meetings and speak with them. They meet in a building on the side of the road made of corrugated iron, lined on the inside with planks of wood for seating. About 30 of them came, and invited me into the building. The first 20 minutes of the meeting was spent paying back their loans. Most of the boda drivers’ goal is to own a motorcycle (if they have to borrow one, they pay 300 KSh to the owner per day, and an average day for them is 700 KSh before paying to rent the bike). Faulu, a microfinance institution here in Nakuru, gives 50,000 KSh loans to the drivers at a 20% interest rate, which the drivers then use to put a down payment on a bike (the total cost is 96,000 KSh, but one of the bike companies, Haojue, allows them to put 50K down and pay the rest back within a year). But the members are really struggling to pay back the loans, and have very little money to spend on a daily basis, which of course becomes especially difficult when they have families to support. Still, the members all contribute 50 KSh per week to the association to build up its own type of revolving loan fund and/or contingency fund (if a driver has hospital fees to pay, for example). Ultimately, their goal as an association is to build up this fund enough that they can loan money to members independent of institutions like Faulu, and then to send one of their members to be trained to be an instructor, so that he (I have never seen a female boda driver) can then train other members to get their licenses at a lower rate. As individuals, they want to own a bike, pay off their loans, and then expand their business, either by buying a second bike to rent out or buying a matatu, ultimately with the goal of owning land (a few of their members do own two bikes and rent one out). I was really amazed, although maybe I shouldn’t be, at their organization and progress, especially considering the association is only two years old.

Next week KENASVIT is hosting a regional conference/workshop in Nairobi to develop a campaign plan for action for the next few years. I am really looking forward to hearing from the representatives from other African countries and comparing their experiences and efforts to those I have been observing and experiencing, particularly that of their relationship to the state and the law. I’ll talk more about that in my next post.

Community Media and VSF: Rough Sketches

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Arielle Milkman
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Voluntarios Sin Fronteras

During my time in Buenos Aires, I’ve had the opportunity to get to know and participate in several exciting projects that aim to reinvent media as a tool of social inclusion. I want to do them all justice in detailed posts, so in this first formal blog entry I will simply briefly introduce one of the projects, Impulso Voluntario, a community magazine sponsored by Voluntarios Sin Fronteras. In later entries I will problematize each experience further, and recount my fieldwork in greater depth.

I am working with my host organization, Voluntarios sin Fronteras, in two major capacities. The first is the supervision of the VSF’s community magazine, Impulso Voluntariado. We currently have eight adolescents participating in the project, in which the participants photograph and document social projects in the city of Buenos Aires, as well as the activities of VSF. The members of this year’s magazine staff range from 15 to 24 years old, and travel from Villa Lujano, Villa Soldati, and Villa Retiro to participate in the project. Each of these neighborhoods has its own very specific social context, but generally speaking, they are some of the most precarious zones of Buenos Aires.

person setting up video cameraAs the courses in design, narrative journalism and photography we offer as part of the magazine’s curriculum are held in VSF’s office in the center of Buenos Aires, most of the students have to travel for at two hours to attend class. Additionally, the courses are generally held on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6:30-8 p.m., which means that the students must return to their houses, often alone, after dark. During the first week of the program, Cintia, who had just recently moved to Buenos Aires from the province of Misiones, was robbed near her house as she tried to return from the center around 9 p.m. After the incident, Cintia’s mother said she couldn’t participate in the project, as coming back late at night could be dangerous.

In order to keep Cintia in the magazine, we created an earlier course so that she would be able to return home during the day, instead of at night.

Cintia and her peers earn a scholarship of 200 pesos a month (roughly 50 U.S. dollars) in exchange for their participation in Impulso Voluntario. Nonetheless, some of the students are consistently tardy or absent in classes, which slows down the progress of the magazine.
In order to organize the narrative journalism class, I proposed the creation of a blog for the group, which now serves as a documentation of the project and a place for the students to store their texts while they work on improving them for the final edition of the magazine.

students studyingMost of the students weren’t originally familiar with blogs, and explaining the process was a bit of a challenge. Most of the magazine’s participants don’t have access to internet in their houses, and some have limited computer skills. The students in the narrative journalism class proposed the title Periodistas Voluntarios (Volunteer Journalists) for the blog, which can now be accessed at http://periodistasvoluntarios2011.blogspot.com/.

The spirit behind this project is absolutely positive, but as I have been working with the kids and the team of volunteers involved in the magazine, I can’t help but think of ways I would change the project to improve it. Preserving VSF’s basic model of a community magazine produced by adolescents from precarious neighborhoods, I would restructure the magazine by producing its contents in one specific neighborhood. I would work with adolescents from one neighborhood, instead of three, and I would set up classes to be taught in the neighborhood, instead of in a neutral environment a two-hour bus ride away. Community media works when it is localized and focused on a specific beat, for a specific public. The problem with Impulso Voluntario, VSF’s magazine, is that the adolescents who write and design each issue are placed into unknown contexts, which are often uninteresting to them. They are often asked to cover events hosted by VSF, which have little direct impact on their communities. From my perspective, a community magazine based in the neighborhoods the participants live and work in would be much more effective as a legitimate project of social inclusion and cultural expression.group photo

The right to fair trial

by

Yuliya Lynch
Perm, Russia
Perm Regional Assistance Center

Just before I started to write my blog, the woman walked in the door to our center. She was an average woman in her late 40s, well dressed, but the sadness and the desperation in her eyes was too hard to ignore.

She stared. Her son was convicted of a rape and sentenced to the 9 years of a jail time. She started to cry. She was very sincere and I can tell that she was sure that her son did not force women to have sex.

Her son is 23 years old. Not sure about the details, but I will tell what I know. Her son and a couple of his friends invited two or more prostitutes to the house in suburbs. They had sex. As a client described, the girls asked the men to pay 2 million rubles ($71, 421) for them not to press charges. The client doesn’t have the money and could not afford to pay the price for the “freedom.” The girls drop the price at the court day to the 1.5 million rubles, but it is still was too high for the client. Well, the client’s son went to trail. During the court hearing, it was decided that he is guilty and must be sentenced to a jail time.

As his mother said, the authorities did not have the results of the expertise, semen match, or any material evidence. The “victims” did not have any bruises. It was no signs of a fight..anywhere. Not even under the nails of the “victims.” You may ask then: “Why would the government put a young men to jail with no evidence and how can this happen?” It is Russia.. anything possible, I would say. The client said that the “girls” had something to do with the way the police treated her son.

In addition to all said, the client claimed that there were a lot of false reports that police wrote. For example, the police officer said that the house, where everything happened was a two story house, but it was only one floor house. Or, that her son has two children. He doesn’t. The facts are very easy to prove and the client has all the prove. What is the problem then? No one listens. She doesn’t have money to bribe the police or to hire a good lawyer. That’s how it is done here.

Here is more. The client told us that on the court day the judge announced that her son is sentenced to 6 years. Then the judge asked if the defendant want to say anything. He said: “I am innocent”. The judge then added: “Son, you said three words, you will be sentenced to three more years”. His total sentence time is now 9 years of 10 maximum for this crime by the law.

The client tried to appeal the decision, but the judge would not even consider the appeal. It is illegal. They wouldn’t even accept her paperwork.

This woman came to the center because she is desperate. She doesn’t know what to do, where to go. She has no one. No one cares.

I understand that you may ask: “Don’t you think that her son may be guilty?” Yes, it is possible. But, if you would see what I saw and hear what I heard, you would not ask. His mother not only has a love for her child, but she knows the situation form the inside as the “victims” and police tried to get money out of her. She is the one, who wrote to the court and got rejected without money.

The center agreed to look at her documents and if everything that she described is true..we are going to fight. I am personally ready to attack..
I will write more about the situation as I will have more information. I hope this post wasn’t too emotional. It is the first time I am writing a blog, so I hope I am on the right track.

A Visit to Digambarpur Village

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Maria Schirmer
Jana Sanskriti Center for Theatre of the Oppressed
Kolkata (Calcutta), West Bengal, India

Our trip to Digambarpur was a long one. Not in kilometers but in time. Unencumbered by traffic we could have made it from the Center, north of Kolkata, to the South 24 Parganas District in 2 or 2 ½ hours but this time it was more like 5. Driving in India is a stressful negotiation with many elements including, cycle rickshaws, auto rickshaws, motorcycles converted into mini flatbed trucks, buses, cars, trucks, regular cycles, pedestrians and various kinds of animals. As we flew along at a heart attack inducing speed (when not actually stuck in traffic the pace on the roads is a race, a race that sadly many people, not to mention animals, lose daily) the polluted bustle of Kolkata gave way to a more agricultural landscape and fresher air. The road was dotted with busy market towns teeming with people. Suddenly we came to a screeching halt. “ We’re here,” Satya exclaimed. Two members of the office staff, two core theatre team members and myself all got out of the car but I was perplexed, here was a few abandoned brick building and a pack of teenagers, who looked equally perplexed (the appearance of a Western women hopping out of a car had given them a bit of a shock), on the side of the road.

Villages in West Bengal (and I suspect in much of India) are not like what I imagine a village to be, tiny and quaint. They are in fact very large in landmass, with houses (most mud with a straw roof, while others are brick) dotted in between farmland. The population is larger then I would have thought too. Digambarpur is about 7000. This is population India style, big. In fact, of India’s one billion plus population nearly 80% live in these sort of agricultural villages. The cities are huge (Kolkata is 14 million) but they make up a small percentage of the nations people. And yet, with so may people considered villagers they still on the margins of society.

Our journey to our final destination involved a couple more steps. First a ride on an aforementioned flatbed motorcycle (brilliant invention by the way) and then a walk in insanely slippery mud, which had the consistency of rubber cement. The landscape was beautiful, lush green from the monsoon rains. The air was crisp and there was a cool breeze so welcome after the humidity of where I am staying. It was easy to feel enchanted. Perhaps that is why politicians are willing to overlook the economic disparity and struggle for basic humans rights rural people face. With scenery so idyllic how could life be bad? But there are secretes hiding in this beautiful place. Alcoholism is high, and with that domestic violence, in large part because of the illegal liquor producers who are in cahoots with the local government. Girl children rarely go to school and are married off young through the humiliating and economically devastating system of dowry, there is no electricity, running water or adequate sanitation. There are government welfare systems in place, food rations, widow’s payments, but not only do they not fix the problem and act as a social Band-Aid, the systems are notoriously corrupt. More recently the government has tried to enact sweeping changes by way of land acquisitions (more like grabs due to the fact that people are grossly undercompensated for their land, if at all) and partnerships with big industry. A notorious example in West Bengal that Jana Sanskriti wrote a play about was in the Singur district, where the government forcibly took land from farmers and gave it to TATA (a massive industrial conglomerate that manufactures everything from steel to salt) far a car factory. This is the government’s idea of development, industrialization that benefits the already rich with promises from the poor. This time the promise was that the famers could now work in the factory. It’s steady wages, they argued, not mentioning that there were only jobs for 40% of the farmers that lost their land.

We were in Digambarpur for a two-day meeting of the Human Rights Protection Committee (see the previous post for an explanation of the HRPC and Jana Sanskriti’s work). The meeting covered everything from education, the theatre work, record keeping and research. What is unique about the HRPC is that it is made up of not only members of Jana Sanskriti’s core team but also spect-actors who have such a long history participating in the Forum plays that they have become a big working family (very big at 13,000, although this meeting was only with about 30). They are also unique in that they are essentially autonomous, meaning that Jana Sanskriti does not dictate what it is they do, although they provide assistance, guidance and resources. The issues they focus on (often women’s issues, education and corruption) are culled from the Forum plays but those plays too are formulated by the villagers. Quite unlike the governments plans for development the work of Jana Sanskriti, and as such HRPC, are not prescriptive. Jana Sanskriti firmly believes in the capacity of those they serve to dictate what is best for their lives and communities. They are only there to facilitate the dialogue and support social change. Human rights I realize are about choice, the choice to live ones life fully, safely and healthy but just how that happens should be up to the community, to the people. Clearly we can see from all the Fellows posts that if we rest our hopes in the State we will be waiting a long time indeed.

Our time in Digambarpur ended with a snack of coconut and muri (puffed rice that is a village staple all over West Bengal) and another very long, harrowing ride home. As we passed the endless crowds of people I wondered just what their choices would be for their lives, where they fully free to have them. And then I though about mine…

My First Week

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Yuliya Lynch
Perm, Russia
Perm Regional Assistance Center

I am working in the Perm Regional Human Rights Protection Center (PRHRPC) in Perm, Russia. This organization offers free legal help to people, who cannot afford to pay for the legal assistance. They have many complains from prisoners and their relatives. Perm is a relatively small city and regional government may be corrupted and not interested in promoting human rights, but rather keep their power. The PRHRPC is a very popular socially powerful organization that works very intensive to protect the citizens.

Last week I went to the round table, where safety on the work place was discussed. Scientists, production companies, authorities, and different legal organs were present. The main question was: “How can Russian companies produce adequate respiratory safety equipment?” It is my understanding of the issue that the manufactures of the respiratory safety equipment did not break the law; they followed the official standards.

However, the standards are too low and not easy to interpret. In this discussion, three sides were presented: the local government, production industry, and human rights activists (PRHRPC). After the debates, it became clear that an official investigation must be conducted and laws (standards), as well as business practices must be changed if necessary.

Every Monday and Thursday, from 4-7 pm citizens come to the Center to express their complaints and to speak with legal representatives. I will discuss it in my next blog.

Prison Rights in Russia

by

Yuliya Lynch
Perm, Russia
Perm Regional Assistance Center

I have been watching people coming to the Human Rights Protection Center every Monday and Thursday from 4-7pm and asking for help. The problems that they are telling to the lawyers mostly related to the prison rights and abuse of power.

One problem that can be described as typical is abuse of power in the prison by making prisoners work for free. By law the government have to pay to the prisoners minimum wage, which is about $150 a month, but instead the authorities paid the prisoner (let’s call him Mr. Ivanov) $1-5 a month. Moreover, the management of the prison promised Mr. Ivanov early parole for the free labor. Most prisoners would take the “deal”. However, the management didn’t put Mr. Ivanov’s name on the parole list as they promised, so his wife complained to the Human Rights Center. Many others of Mr. Ivanov’s rights were violated, but it is very hard to prove it because the management covered the facts by the fake documents or lack of the documents in prison. The management of the prison use free slavery labor and do not give anything in return.

I am happy that people in Russia seek the legal assistance and do not afraid to fight for their rights. This is a big step toward a better future. However, the Russian government must take action to eliminate the abuse of power and promote human rights, if they want to achieve progress.

Informal Rights: Migori Street Vendors and Informal Traders

by

Becky Asch
Nakuru, Kenya
Kenya National Alliance for Street Vendors and Informal Traders

Post taken from: http://beckyasch.wordpress.com/

On Monday morning, I boarded a matatu from Nakuru to go to Migori. The trip was supposed to take 5 hours (at least that’s what I was told), but that turned out to be a VERY optimistic estimate… in the end it took me nearly 9 hours. So I got a lot of reading and thinking done on the ride, and got to see the countryside which is absolutely beautiful and so lush as you drive southbound through Nyanza Province… rolling hills quilted with maize, tea, sugarcane, groundnuts and bananas, dotted with huts and houses.

Migori is a town center in the district by the same name in southwestern Kenya. It’s inhabited mostly by Luo (I got to use some of my Acholi that I learned in Gulu), and there are some Kisii and Maasai living there as well. I went there to learn more about what KENASVIT’s urban affiliate MISVESTS does, the challenges they face, their ongoing projects, and the way they operate.

After quite an odd night at the hotel on Monday (I met some really interesting people, to say the least), MISVESTS’ Secretary met me first thing Tuesday morning to walk into town, meet some of the members at their places of work and attend MISVESTS’ management meeting.

We walked through Suna Marindi Market in town, which is swarming with vendors selling tilapia (from Lake Victoria), veggies, fruit, meat, “cereal” (beans, grains, etc.), electronics/plastic products/clothing (from Nairobi, originally US/Europe/China), shoes, soaps… you name it. There’s a definite method to the madness, with particular sections designated to different products. The sections are also very gendered, with women selling most of the food products and men selling electronics and plastic goods, with women outnumbering men in the market (the ratio of men:women in the informal sector here is about equal, but the informal transport sector, such as boda-boda and matatu drivers, is almost entirely male). The vendors are centered in and around a circular brick wall that encloses a fraction of them, and the rest have set up stands or sheets on the ground with their products around the perimeter, often under the shade of an umbrella.

After about an hour of roaming the market and speaking with vendors, we went to a small open cement room in a one-story building just beyond the market, where the management meetings are temporarily being held. The meeting began with a prayer (as is very common here) and introductions, and then committee members all contributed to tell me the story underlying the organization and the market:

Before the current market’s existence, vendors used to sell their products in a makeshift area that they built with scrap materials and corrugated iron sheets. This marketplace regularly caught on fire, and many of the vendors’ products and selling areas were destroyed. The traders were constantly harassed and bribed by askari (police), who would charge them with obstruction or trading in a non-designated area and confiscate their goods, a problem that was exacerbated by the unofficial nature of the makeshift market. (This harassment, bribery and confiscation takes place almost uniformly across the country, as the informal sector does not have a legal framework, is often excluded from urban plans, and traders can’t afford to the days off of work or the court fees to follow through with a case that they have little chance of winning anyway… the actual numbers of those arrested each day in urban areas is staggering). In addition, the levies for trading licenses in Migori were being raised every month, with no rhyme or reason (well, the reason was just to fatten the tax collectors’ wallets), and they were unaffordable. After such routine injustice and frustration, the vendors decided to get together and form MISVESTS to be able to more loudly and effectively voice their concerns to the Municipal Council and other relevant authorities.

Since MISVESTS’ founding, it has accomplished a great amount, but still faces a lot of obstacles. One of its first goals was to have a market officially designated for informal traders, which would reduce the level of harassment and bribery, provide better working conditions, and would represent acknowledgment of their work. The Municipal Council (MC) repeatedly told MISVESTS that they were willing to but didn’t have the funds to support such a project. Two years ago the EU agreed to give a grant to the Migori MC to build the market, under the condition that the Council would contribute funds as well. As there were already kiosks existing in the area designated for the new market, the owners agreed to have their kiosks demolished if they would get first priority for stalls in the new market (MISVESTS took an inventory of over 200 kiosk owners which this applied to). After 1 year, the first phase of building (the brick perimeter) had been completed… BUT, when the EU came to assess the progress, they found that the Council had misused some of the grant money, and decided to terminate their support altogether. Understandable I guess, but not a solution; it left the traders without a market and those who had sacrificed their kiosks for the sake of the new market in a particularly bad position.

After a lengthy period of stalled construction (the MC wouldn’t continue building), MISVESTS decided to take matters into its own hands, and persistently petitioned the MC to allow the vendors to build it themselves (this was after an intensive consultation process with all levels of membership/management — general member meetings, management committee meetings, and executive committee meetings — to agree on the terms of negotiation). In one of the committee members’ words, “If you wait you could even die before it is built, so we decided to build ourselves.” MISVESTS’ management even traveled to Siaya to see an example of a market that they would model Migori’s after.

The MC eventually accepted this proposal, and decided that they would allow the traders to finish construction of the market themselves, with their own money, albeit with a few stipulations: KSh 5,000 is to be paid to the MC for the right to build each stall, and the construction must be complete by early June of this year. This was a mixed blessing. In one sense, it demonstrates the incredible resilience, determination, ability and agency that these vendors have in demanding their right to trade and have a decent place of work. On the other hand, it confirms the fact that if they are to have their own market, they will have to fight for it and use their own money, underscoring the lack of acknowledgment of their work at the government level.

The success of this agreement has been tainted with a number of challenges. To start, the construction is very expensive: approximately KSh 9,000 per stall for building costs, plus the 5K for the right to the stall (the exchange rate is about KSh 89 to US$1). Since most if not all vendors do not have this kind of money to spend all at once, construction has been slow and the June deadline passed with many of the kiosks still unfinished (albeit in progress). The MC had initially agreed that if construction were not done by the deadline, they would meet with MISVESTS management to discuss the next steps. Instead, they have avoided all of MISVESTS’ attempts to contact them and set up a meeting, and in the meantime have been unlawfully repossessing and selling the unfinished kiosks at hiked up prices (KSh 25-30,000), pocketing the difference. Furthermore, the MC had agreed to provide services such as garbage collection, water and toilet facilities to the market, but has not followed through on this. There is currently 1 toilet facility for the entire market (there are probably more than 1,000 vendors working there on any given day), and proper garbage collection and water provisions are nonexistent.

But for all of the predictable obstacles that stem from the pervasive corruption in the municipal government and the refusal to properly acknowledge the informal sector in Migori (as in most of Kenya), the market project demonstrates MISVESTS’ incredible dedication, persistence and ability to improve the working conditions of their members. This organization is not a group of outsiders who have come in to help the less fortunate: it is a group made up entirely of street vendors and informal traders who have come together to demand acknowledgement of their sector and better working conditions for themselves and their fellow traders. It’s quite difficult to describe my emotions as I walked through the market and saw people building the stalls to work in, as I listened to the committee members proudly and eagerly sharing with me the purpose of their organization, their accomplishments and their challenges. Bittersweet is the best word I can come up with, but doesn’t do it justice. I sat for 3 hours attentively listening and writing pages of notes as they shared with me, and I learned so much and felt so privileged to be a part of their efforts.

One conclusion that this case demonstrates, and that has been increasingly clear to me since I started work here a month ago, is the misleading nature of the term ‘informal’. Of course, there is a reason the sector has such a name: it is not captured in official economic indicators such as GDP (even though it constitutes nearly 80% of Kenya’s economy); workers do not have formal contracts that guarantee certain work protections (such as overtime, maternity leave, safe workplace conditions, etc.); there is no uniform legal framework pertaining to the sector… I could go on. But the term ‘informal’ seems to mask the extent to which the sector is inextricably linked to the ‘formal’. Indeed, many of the products that are sold are purchased from the formal sector (i.e. electronic products from China, airtime for mobile phones, etc.), the vendors pay levies for licenses and business spaces to the government, organizations such as MISVESTS take up roles that are officially delegated to the formal/public sector (building markets, providing members with access to credit, service provisions such as water, garbage collection and sanitation facilities) — the informal sector’s very existence both supports and is supported by the formal sector. In many ways, the formal sector has actually proved to be just as informal as the informal sector, if not more: government officials pocketing money from made-up fees, making empty promises, police harassing and bribing the workers, and the like. Thus, we can see that these terms are often misleading, as both sectors straddle the line between formal and informal. Just something I’ve been contemplating a lot since I arrived.

Next post I’ll write more about what I’ve been doing at KENASVIT in terms of projects and responsibilities, and talk a little bit more about how I understand my role here, both at work and in the community.