Justice for all

Recently, I’ve been reading a really great book — In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India, by Edward Luce. I was born in India but moved to the U.S. at a young age - and yet, I recently felt that I didn’t know enough about my birthplace’s political scene. So I decided to pick up this book, and it has provided me with valuable insights into the country’s political and economic development since the time of Gandhi’s independence movement.

Strangely though - much of what it describes are things I’ve already known intuitively after my summer visits to the country. When you go to India, you see stark disparities. It’s a country of contradictions. You see bustling technological complexes and advanced software research coupled with beggars on the street, trash on the side of the road. It seems ridiculous that squalor can co-exist with incredible intelligence and innovation - India’s top government-funded colleges, like the IITs, churn out some of the world’s most intelligent minds. These men and women go on to become true leaders in science, technology, and business. And more recently, India has been achieving remarkable economic growth. From the 1980s to 2001, the percent of Indians living below the poverty line fell from 40% to about 26% - not an insignificant drop. The government clearly has more than enough money and resources to ensure basic living standards. The question is not one of its financial capacity. So why does a country that is a technological and intellectual leader, with a legacy of peace and a burgeoning economy - fail to meet so many of its’ citizens basic needs? The conditions seem ripe - yet the change isn’t coming fast enough.

To me, the biggest problem in India always struck me as corruption. Luce cites that an estimated 85% of all development spending is pocketed by bureaucrats. And in the state of Bihar, India’s second poorest, more than 80% of the food is “stolen” due to corruption. The state loses so much money in development and infrastructure projects that at the end of day, little actually gets done - even when it is done in the name of the poor. As more money comes in, officials are pocketing more while the poor are getting the same - or even less. I saw this with my own eyes in India. Bribes are a regular way of life, and often are necessary for daily activities to occur. People have accepted that corruption is ingrained into the country’s culture and politics. In the book, Luce writes how government jobs are coveted by so many in India. Working for the government means that one has generous “benefits” - and can make vast amounts of money on the side by taking bribes. This shocked me at the time, and saddens me now.

Secretary Clinton recently visited India, focusing on relations between the two countries and India’s leadership on environmental issues, defense, and nuclear energy. Yet, I believe that there are so many more underlying factors that she could have discussed. Corruption, economic development, inequality, discrimination - these are the issues that make daily life a challenge for the billion people in India. Why does the international community always look at India in terms of 1) it’s tenuous relationship with Pakistan, and 2) nuclear power? Sure, these issues are important, but they are not going to change the lives of the millions that live in poverty. I understand that Secretrary Clinton was there to focus on foreign policy. But like President Obama did in his Ghana speech, she could have done well to bring up issues like corruption.

India is also constantly praised for being a democracy. Yes, it’s a democracy, but one component of true democracy - I believe - is lack of corruption: transparency, accountability. Unfortunately, corruption is a daily reality for Indians, but international leaders rarely allude to it, instead willing to ignore the problem while covering it all up in the name of “democracy.” True, there are many wonderful aspects of Indian democracy which have endured to this day, such as Nehru’s intelligent legacies of secularism and equality under the law for all citizens (despite so many caste- and religion-based cleavages). Yet, there remains much to be desired. If corruption is implicitly accepted by Indians and passed over in international debates - how will things ever change?

(This is just a brief snapshot of one issue that matters to me. I strongly recommend the book, which also talks about caste politics, the legal system, and many other cultural and religious factors that impact India today.)

This is a topic that has been swirling around in my mind for months, but I’ve never really garnered the courage to write it down coherently. But now, as I embark on a journey to work with International Bridges to Justice (IBJ) in Geneva this summer, this topic is becoming increasingly relevant to my work.

I am passionate about working to end human rights abuses, and I realize that Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are two of the most prominent organizations working to raise awareness of human rights violations across the globe. Their work has been indispensable in terms of uncovering the truth of human rights abuses in various countries through intensive research, and in pressuring governments to take action by way of international exposure, letter writing, and petition signing. I think advocacy and raising awareness is absolutely vital if we are to end ongoing violations. After all, if the public doesn’t know about these situations, then how can people take action to end these problems? The popular mobilization and awareness that Amnesty has achieved over the years is truly remarkable. However, I wonder whether advocacy is the most effective method of combating human rights abuses, especially in the long-run.

First, it seems to me that political situations are very difficult to change. Especially, international civil society does not seem to exert significant influence on the political climates in many countries. Even if a huge amount of pressure is placed upon government heads through activities like protests and petitions, how much is this really going to change? And if the international community has heightened awareness of an issue, does this really change things on the ground? For instance, there is a huge amount of awareness within the U.S. and U.K at least regarding the genocide in Darfur. Many organizations like Save Darfur and STAND have mobilized many people and large amounts of money and time in order to raise awareness of the genocide and try to stop it, especially through political pressure and pleas for divestment from Sudan. Many successes have been achieved, most importantly widespread knowledge of the situation and recognition that it is genocide and must be stopped. Yet even after all this, Sudanese President Al-Bashir is still going strong and little has changed over the years. The genocide is continuing. President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton are yet to take a strong stance on ending the genocide. Has this impressive popular mobilization and heightened awareness done much at all? True, I am pinpointing a specific situation – but it does leave me feeling that there must be more that we can do than raise awareness. Because it simply doesn’t seem enough to me.

Moreover, many human rights advocacy organizations hold large campaigns to free single persons from prison, especially those who were imprisoned for political reasons. But I have to ask: does this really lead to large scale social change? Organizations have campaigned for years and succeeded in freeing political prisoners, but this is only one situation, one person. But does this sort of advocacy force the government to think twice the next time it wants to imprison someone for political (or any other) reasons? I don’t see that happening enough. And what about all the everyday cases, when people are being imprisoned for petty crimes, when the local police is incredibly corrupt, when men and women are tortured unnecessarily, when poor prisoners aren’t granted a lawyer or a fair trial? While a political prisoner is a special case, regular citizens are being punished unfairly everyday and aren’t being recognized by the international community. Does advocacy fail here? Who’s fighting for the unheard prisoners? Too often their voices go unheard, even within international civil society.

Here is when I think a different model needs to be employed in order to effectively fight human rights abuses. We need to improve local justice systems and work with governments, not just against them, in order to reform the criminal justice systems. We have to train local police forces and make them understand that torture is unacceptable, and is not necessary in order to extract information from prisoners. We need to ensure that every poor person has the right to a lawyer and the right to a fair trial. I feel like this bottom-up approach can be truly effective, and combined with advocacy and raising awareness can be very powerful. If we start at the bottom through criminal justice reform in developing countries, we can build up strong legal institutions that will eventually create precedents for not using torture or unfair detainment – which will trickle upwards and prevent the government from detaining political prisoners or exercising their power arbitrarily. IBJ focuses on this approach to grassroots criminal justice reform, and I think it is a unique yet effective method of combating torture.

I think advocacy and activism needs to be combined with action and results. Real systematic change happens on the ground, step-by-step and day by day. One model I like is that of Physicians for Human Rights, an organization which not only has advocacy campaigns but also concrete projects that help people by the day - like the asylum network which assists asylum seekers by documenting forensic evidence of torture and abuse. Another example is Invisible Children, an organization based on a documentary about child soldiers in Northern Uganda. In addition to raising awareness through the documentary, they also have a book drive, build schools, and sell bracelets and give the revenue to the bracelet makers, provide scholarships to children, and have a Savings and Training Initiative which is basically a microfinance scheme. Of course, I don’t think some of their campaigns are the best idea (abduct yourself? really?), but they have a good basic model for combining raising awareness with actual results. I also love Human Rights First, which combines much advocacy and petitioning with projects that represent asylum seekers and help refugees resettle in the U.S.

So ultimately, I’m not saying advocacy is not necessary. I just think that there needs to be so much more if systematic, widespread change is to happen.

Image credit: flicker user bashaspix

There’s a very interesting opinion article in the International Herald Tribune about Hillary Clinton and her recent trip to China.

Hillary Clinton in China

On Wednesday, the State Department released a report criticizing China for its human rights record. However, in one of her first important diplomatic moves as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton showed little support for human rights and seemed to directly contradict the findings of the State Department report, and more generally the U.S. position regarding China & human rights.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton may have set back the cause of human rights in China when she said on her Asia tour that while the United States will continue to press China on issues such as Tibet, Taiwan and human rights, “our pressing on those issues can’t interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis.”

Clinton’s position has two potentially detrimental effects. It undermines the long-fought campaign for a comprehensive foreign policy, one recognizing the interdependence of human rights concerns with traditional strategic goals. And it ultimately fails civil society groups in China and those suffering human rights abuses. — Sonia Cardenas

I’m shocked that Clinton chose to prioritize economic issues over human rights — not that those issues aren’t important, but simply because she’s denying that human rights is important. By choosing to separate human rights from all these other issues, Clinton also fails to understand that all these problems are interrelated. How can you progress on climate change or security when human rights at home are being violated? In the end, all these issues have to be addressed. And human rights definitely has to be one of the top priorities. For the first time, I’m incredibly disappointed in Hillary Clinton, and I hope that this doesn’t signal future blatant disregard of human rights by the Obama administration.

She went out of her way to downgrade human rights, placing economic, environmental and security relations above the abuse of countless individuals under Chinese rule - members of minority and religious groups who are systematically repressed, detainees and prisoners who are tortured, human rights and civil society activists arbitrarily detained, women and children routinely subjected to violence and discrimination and tens of thousands without recourse to an effective justice system, as well as widespread censorship. — Sonia Cardenas

And some argue that before the U.S. can criticize other countries for its human rights abuses, the U.S. has to ensure that it is respecting human rights itself. Of course, this is true, and I’ve always strongly believed that by closing Guantanamo, the U.S. will demonstrate its commitment to human rights and can become a more effective advocate of human rights around the world. But, when people attempt to use this argument as a way to effectively exempt other countries from criticism for their human rights abuses - by saying “Oh, since the U.S. is being hypocritical, they have no right to speak out against other countries’ human rights violations” - that’s what I think is wrong. Regardless of what the U.S. is doing at home, America has such great power abroad that it cannot simply ignore. The U.S. has to continue exercising this power for good, by continuing to pressure other countries - including China - to end human rights violations. American hypocrisy may end soon - or it may never end; America has never had a perfect human rights record. Does that mean that the U.S. shouldn’t work to end human rights abuses in the meantime? No. Ending human rights violations simply has to start now, rather than being postponed “sometime” into the future.

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