Path to Justice from Penal Reform International on Vimeo. This quarter, I’m interning with the Northwestern University Center on International Human Rights, a legal clinic in the law school. One of our projects is an access to justice project in Malawi, where we work to improve legal representation for prisoners – particularly those sentenced to…
While the deadly Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) may have left Uganda for good, the notorious rebel army hasn’t stopped wreaking havoc in the region. Ugandan President Museveni recently said at a press conference in Kampala that Joseph Kony, leader of the LRA, may now be in southern Darfur. Kony has been fleeing ever since he…
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…
I wanted to briefly post these two talks, which I absolutely absolutely loved recently. 1. Shashi Tharoor, on India’s “soft power” Click here to watch it (unfortunately TED won’t let me embed it for some strange reason). Shashi Tharoor was elected to India’s parliament in May 2009, representing Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala as minister for external affairs….
In “Our Turn to Eat,” Michaela Wrong writes about Kenya: Kenya’s foreign partners failed to grasp that a system of rule based on the ‘Our Turn to Eat’ principle was explicitly designed to prevent the trickle-down upon which they counted for progress. The better Kenya’s economy fared, the more unstable the country actually became, because…
**Please forgive me for interrupting the Be the Change series — back to your regularly scheduled programming soon! I’m taking an absolutely amazing class right now about Sudan, human rights, and US foreign policy. It has been so illuminating and challenging – it’s actually taught by the former Special Envoy, which is pretty amazing (sometimes…
Here’s a horrifying article from The Guardian, discussing the spread of Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army into Congo. Already 1,200 have been killed and more than 2,000 (about one-third children) have been kidnapped in the DRC in the past year. In one area of Congo, about 360,000 people have been forced to flee their homes. While…
Today, President Obama spoke to Africans in his speech to the Ghanaian Parliament. Before reading, I was kept in anticipation, exciting to hear the new vision of our President with regards to Africa. I was excited, especially, after the revelations in his Cairo speech – and I hoped that he would bring a fresh perspective…
Recently I featured The Enough Project and the work they are doing to raise awareness of the war in Congo. Enough says that sexual violence in Eastern Congo is often intensified by wars over access to “conflict minerals,” – metals which end up being used in our cell phones and other electronic devices. The good…
Today I want to feature an amazing organization in Sierra Leone, called Timap for Justice. Timap for Justice is an innovative organization aiming to provide basic access to justice to the people of Sierra Leone. Timap for Justice formed to address the shortage of lawyers in the country, and employs and trains community-based paralegals instead…