Justice for all

This is the time of year for reflections, and I’m certainly no exception to the rule. So here goes (though I don’t usually talk much about myself on this blog):

In 2009, I finished studying abroad at the London School of Economics and fell even more deeply in love with London and LSE. I also continued working with the Student Microfinance Development Initiative (SMDI), a student-run nonprofit which I helped start up. SMDI connects student volunteers with microfinance institutions, and spending so many late nights and long strategy meetings working on the organization was one of the best experiences of the year - I learned so much about microfinance, became part of a team, and met some incredibly passionate and intelligent students. While at LSE, I also visited The Hague, Netherlands with the ICC Student Network. There, we met with representatives from the Coalition for the ICC and Special Court for Sierra Leone. We sat in on the trials of Thomas Lubanga and Momcilo Perisic (at the ICTY). We even met with Chief Prosecutor Moreno-Ocampo. This incredible trip immersed me into international justice, which has become one of my main passions today. While abroad, I also traveled to Spain, Ireland, Scotland, Greece, and within the UK to Oxford, Bath, Canterbury, Leeds Castle, Brighton, Windsor, Stonehenge, and Stratford-upon-Avon. And at LSE, I got to see the Queen from afar, as well as hear lectures from Navanetham Pillay, Bernanke, and Paul Collier! It was the most amazing time of my life!

Over the summer, I got an internship grant from Northwestern and moved to Geneva, Switzerland - the world’s peace capital - for a summer internship with International Bridges to Justice (IBJ), an amazing non-profit that works to reform malfunctioning justice systems and end torture in the developing world. I worked on so many exciting things, mostly related to online communications. I got to visit the UN headquarters in Geneva, learn a teeny bit of french, visit the Alps and some beautiful Swiss towns like Montreux and Aigle, lounge by Lac Leman, and experience the beautiful Fete de Geneve! I somehow got featured on Fortune for my internship (believe me, it was sheer luck - but still cool!). It was an amazing experience, and I have become very passionate about access to justice issues. More recently, I raised $1,274 for IBJ for their fundraising campaign, and was very happy with the outcome (thanks to all that donated!).

The Swiss Alps (taken by me)

After that, I returned to the U.S., experienced reverse culture shock (or maybe I just missed London!) and started working on my political science senior thesis, which is on transitional justice mechanisms in Sierra Leone and Rwanda. It’s challenging but fascinating. Last quarter I also took an amazing class on Sudan with the former US Special Envoy to Sudan! I also became the Co-President of Amnesty International’s NU chapter, so that has been exciting and also time-consuming. As the year wraps up, I’m applying to jobs and fellowships in the hope that I’ll have some exciting options for after graduation.

In 2009 I bought my own domain name and created this website! This year, I also fell in love with social media. I really became addicted to Twitter and to blogging, and learned the value of an online community. Never before have I been able to connect with so many other intelligent young people who share the same passions and interests. Social media has really impacted my life and taught me a lot - and I have made some great friends and met some wonderful people through the process! I started the Be the Change series, in which so many Gen Yers came together to share their thoughts on social change issues. It was an inspirational affirmation of the fact that my generation does care about the world.

Of course, there have been some failures too, but all in all this year was an amazing one. All my experiences have helped me figure out what I ultimately want to accomplish in life and have made me much more independent. I have truly grown as a person. But for some reason, it feels like this year has gone by too fast. I’m not ready for the next year - which will bring with it uncertainty and numerous challenges. I have only one wish for 2010: to find a job I love! If this happens, all will fall into place

Wishing you all a happy 2010 with more successes and growth!

I ran across this really excellent post the other day, by Lola Adesioye. I love this quote from her:

I have spent many column inches and airtime talking about the shoulda, woulda and the couldas of life. And don’t get me wrong – I enjoy it! But I also ask myself how much of a difference it makes. As someone committed to making a tangible difference in the world, I’m becoming much more interested in, and committed to, work that provides solutions to an issue and is forward thinking.

Ultimately, what impact can blogging, writing, and researching can have? It’s something I personally struggle with.

Today, we are constantly bombarded by information - whether it’s from the news, from blogs, from Twitter, or from other social networks. There hasn’t been any other time in history when people have had access to so much information so quickly and so easily. Of course, the American news media contains many flaws - far too much trivial coverage, and far too little on important issues across the globe. But, true understanding is just a Google away, regardless of the topic’s coverage in the mainstream media. What can I add through blogging, by adding my voice to this cacophony? Am I doomed to be lost in the web streams, or is my writing actually of value? Is it worth spending my time writing about things, rather than actually doing them?

When it comes to academic research, I certainly love reading a really good paper on transitional justice or aid or governance as much as the next person. While research certainly is necessary, I am again left to wonder what effect that has on the world. What I find more urgent than new research is the need to properly and fully implement all the findings and solutions that are already out there. We already know what needs to happen - and we need to start making these things happen. It seems that the more critical need is here, in the implementation stage.

The impact of writing depends on luck. Writing can reach people, but there is no guarantee it will. The impact of writing depends on the rise of those who will listen, learn, and implement your thoughts or solutions in the “real world.” One person might take something away from your writing, or a million people might take action because of it. Rarely, however, does the latter happen. But by being the implementer, you can begin affecting change immediately.

I want to make an impact in this world, but I strive to reconcile this with my own love for writing. I care about human rights and development issues, but first and foremost, I have always had the answer “Writing” at the tip of my tongue when anyone asks me simply: What is your passion? I have always had a propensity for words - whether it is through poetry or blogging or academic papers.

I want both: to be an implementer, but also a writer and thinker. Is there some way to incorporate both into life and career? How can we bridge this divide between: theory and practice, writing and doing, talking and solving. One or the other might be satisfying, but only a combination might be truly fulfilling.

Charles Taylor Trial (Credit: BBC)

I just ran across this fascinating Time interview with Stephen Rapp, who was previously chief prosecutor for the Special Court for Sierra Leone (H/T Shelby Grossman). Rapp states:

The concern all of us had was that we were conducting justice in a comfortable courtroom with long trials and well-paid attorneys. Prisoners had single cells, and they had committed the worst crimes. A mile away in the local prison there were simply no resources. Cases can’t go forward, witnesses are lost, and people stay in detention for many years at a stretch. [If I was] to do it over, I would try to develop a court within the national system. That would be my preference. Maybe not a court that costs $30 million a year like the Special Court, but an appropriate court.

This is something I thought about while writing the post “Villains & Supervillains,” after my trip to The Hague with the ICC Student Network last year, but never fully articulated.

I understand that many of these “supervillians” - war criminals, genocidaires, leaders who have led crimes against humanity, are some of the worst perpetrators in that world. For that reason, they receive special attention, and they are given fair trials and adequate living conditions. They are allowed to represent themselves in court, and a great deal of attention is paid to their trials to ensure they are truly fair. This all makes complete sense, because their trials are, and should be, high profile and well publicized in order to draw attention to their horrific crimes and resulting punishments, and thereby contribute to ending the atmosphere of impunity worldwide. Without fair trials and without widespread publicity of these proceedings, there is no chance that the justice being done will deter future perpetrators (though the possibility of deterrence itself is arguable).

But the greater travesty and grosser injustice is the fact that we are pumping millions of dollars into international courts which have doubtful impacts, and are simultaneously completely ignoring the life-threatening conditions in the national justice systems of many developing countries. Isn’t this ironic? While war criminals are getting the royal treatment, everyday people - many of them poor - are arbitrarily detained in various African countries, often for stealing a piece of bread or for political reasons. In many African countries, torture continues to be widespread as an interrogative tool despite laws in the books prohibiting it.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), 80% of prisoners are in pre-trial detention, and there is no law criminalizing torture. In Kenya, even petty offenders must wait an average of 5 years to have their case heard. In Kampala, Uganda, many prisons are overcrowded, often at 300% of capacity. And in Nigeria, women are held alongside men in prison, often leading to rape and sexual violence. In Zimbabwe, news reports have shown emaciated inmates starving to death from lack of food, often forced to catch and eat rats to survive.

The criminal justice systems of many developing countries are in far worse conditions than that of the U.S., and are arbitrary, unfair, and life-threatening. If the international community devoted one-tenth of the attention to this issue as they do to providing fair trials to supervillains, then many more innocent lives would be saved.

As the status quo stands, a guy who is responsible for the genocide of thousands gets a lawyer of his own and a fair trial, while the poor, innocent, arbitrarily detained are tortured and starve to death without ever having access to counsel. Is this fair, or just? I don’t think so. This doesn’t mean we should pay less attention to war criminals, but that we should work harder to ensure a fair trial to those who are not.

An old man walks along a beach and sees a young boy throwing something into the water. As he approaches, he sees hundreds of starfish lining the beach, washed in from the tide. The young boy is rushing around, throwing the starfish back into the water one by one. The old man asks why he bothers, it’s pointless. There are too many starfish to help them all. As he flings a starfish deep into the water, the young boy replies, “It mattered to that one.”

The moment I heard this quote, I absolutely loved it. It’s a beautiful story that reminds us that change starts small, and with the individual. Sure, we can have grand visions of eradicating poverty or ending torture - but we must not lose sight of the individual while pursuing these grand visions. Sadly, I think this often happens in development/human rights work. When we become so caught up in our abstract theories and statements, we lose sight of what really matters: the individual. The farmer enduring daily poverty, the refugee displaced by conflict, the victim of torture in Guantanamo Bay. Let’s not lose sight of these people in our quest for “social change.” Let’s not forget to hear the voices of the poor and marginalized when we’re devising solutions to help them.

It makes me wish I could have a more direct impact on people’s lives. Makes me wish I could just directly help a “starfish.” All this work I do, whether it’s marketing/communications for non-profits or writing a senior thesis on transitional justice — is it making any impact? I have no idea. That’s why I really, really, want to be able to work in the field next year so I can see what is happening on the ground. If the opportunity to work abroad doesn’t work out, I’ll at least begin volunteering in something more tangible - whether it’s tutoring or working with immigrants/refugees. I just want to know I’m making an impact. Sometimes, all this non-profit work seems to be anything but.

I have just put down “Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books” (It was a very disjointed book; I don’t recommend it unless you are an enormous fan of James, Nabokov, Austen, Fitzgerald. Even then, I believe her analysis of these works is somewhat cursory.) The book is about oppression during the Islamic Republic in Iran, and mostly about how the Islamic Republic truly stifles any emotion, any depth of feeling — indeed, it destroys any attempts at even living.

Women, of course, bear the brunt of the regime’s repression. Women must wear a full-length chador outside, cannot be seen unaccompanied, cannot walk alongside a man who is not a father, brother, or son. Perhaps worst of all, the Islamic Republic prevents one from falling in love - that which we take for granted, and see as so sacred in the West. In such a brutal regime, love itself is corrupted, broken down into something worthless. Love is the “West” - it is tainted, unnatural, decadent, and worst of all - worth hating. The author, Azar Nafisi, falls ever deeper into the only escape she has - literature. She teacher her students how to appreciate literature, how to escape through literature, and perhaps most of all — how to utilize literature to better understand their own lives. Fiction, perhaps, is the closest these young women will ever get to experiencing love, happiness, joy, passion. For the Islamic Republic strips all emotion from the experience of life. And so, are the oppressed even living, or simply the dead on earth?

For some reason, the book made me think deeply about the journey of my own mind. In high school and perhaps the beginning of college, I still thought of myself as a largely artistic persona. I was constantly in pursuit of beauty - I too, like the girls in this book, was in love with fiction. I could read for hours, delve deep into the characters, find meaning to apply to my own experiences (though perhaps they were not so dramatic). I loved art and music, too. Most of all, I loved poetry. Poetry always held the most meaning to me because it simply represents a feeling. It magically captures a thought, freezes a moment in time.

But you know what? I am no longer able to appreciate literature in the same way as I did before. Instead my mind is overtaken by thoughts of poverty & human rights violations. I am constantly reading books like “Out of Poverty” by Paul Polak, and “The Rich Get Richer, The Poor Get Prison.” I’ve become a lover of non-fiction, a fan of practical applications. Theory and indeed, the magic of fiction somehow holds less appeal to me now.

This may sound a bit crazy, but human rights violations, poverty, the massive magnitude of problems in this world — they are, to me, the oppressive Islamic Republic. I myself am being oppressed by all the problems out there. When there is such ugliness in the world, I am restricted. I cannot turn away from the problems to simply take a deep breath and enjoy the simple pleasures in life - like art, fiction, or poetry. I cannot sympathize with fictional characters, because I am overwhelmed with concern, frustration, worry about real people and their very real human suffering. So I have to read about solutions to these issues instead. The level of human suffering out there is oppressive. It is always in the back of my mind, lurking behind me like a ever-growing shadow. (P.S. I do not mean to make light of the concept of ‘oppression’ - I obviously know you can’t compare the repression of the Islamic Republic to my own life, at ALL. I’m not complaining - merely realizing something that I didn’t see so clearly before).

Fiction begins to seem trivial. Art, unnecessary. Fiction and art, especially, are too particular. Poetry, for me, is the hardest. Poetry is still beautiful to me but only because it can take on any shape, any meaning — the meaning I want. I still appreciate and love poetry because it helps me put the amount of human suffering out there into words. It remains amorphous and I can take it with me on this journey of the mind.

Ultimately, Nafisi and her girls have to fight the Islamic Republic because they have no choice — they are forbidden from living, loving, breathing, being while under the oppressive hand of the regime. There are only three choices: fight, leave, or die. In other words: win, give up, or lose. Nafisi herself gives up. So do many of the others.

For me, I have to, have to do something to alleviate the human suffering that is so oppressive in my mind - that is not allowing me to enjoy the simple things that are at my feet. For me, there can only be one choice: win. I cannot concede defeat, nor can I bear the weight of losing. But winning may not be possible in my lifetime, sadly — and perhaps I will have to create a fourth option to fit into: die fighting.