Justice for all

A couple of Fridays a month, I like to feature non-profits and changemakers on my blog to raise awareness of the great work they do, provide a dose of inspiration, and show that positive change is possible. Catch up on my other Feature Friday posts here.

This week, I would like to feature Global Rights, an incredible international human rights organization which fights for access to justice, women’s rights and gender equality, and racial and ethnic equality in developing countries across the world. Founded in 1978, Global Rights works with local activists and human rights advocates in Africa, Asia and Latin America to protect the rights of poor and marginalized populations. They advocate for human rights by documenting rights abuses, working towards legal and policy reform, and providing legal services to the underserved. Their approach to working alongside local leaders makes them truly unique and highly effective:

Global Rights is unique among U.S.-based international human rights organizations in that we have a long-term field-based presence in the countries in which we operate and work on the ground to build local capacity. We work this way for two reasons. First, we believe that local knowledge and expertise is essential to the successful administration of programming. Our local partners know the communities in which we work, are familiar with their cultures and traditions, and often are already active in promoting the legal rights of the poor and marginalized. Second, we recognize that long-term, systemic change can occur only if stakeholders themselves are involved. By transferring knowledge and skills to local partners, we ensure that they can continue work even after our programming has come to an end.

I am currently volunteering with a small organization that receives funding from Global Rights, and from what I have seen, I know that Global Rights is supporting great initiatives on the ground and truly working in a strong partnership with local leaders, officials, and activists working to change the human rights situation in their countries.

Most of all, I admire Global Rights for their important work in the access to justice field. Quite simply, not enough organizations across the world are working on access to justice and legal rights initiatives, and I am impressed by Global Rights’ work in this area.

Their access to justice work centers around ensuring that the indigent, especially women, have access to high quality legal services regardless of their financial situation or level of understanding of the arcane legal system. Global Rights works to strengthen legal institutions so that the justice system is more easily accessible by vulnerable groups. Some of their specific projects include:

• Training young lawyers in civil, criminal and international human rights law in Afghanistan.
• Also in Afghanistan, creating a pilot program to provide poor family court clients in Kabul with legal services free of cost.
• Promoting the use of legally enforceable marriage contracts to improve women’s rights in Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco.
• Strengthening the capacity of legal services groups to bring impact litigation in Burundi’s courts, on behalf of victims of land conflict and sexual and gender-based violence.
• Developing court accompaniment and paralegal training programs aimed at increasing access to justice for poor women in Morocco and Nigeria.

Make sure to check out Global Rights‘ incredible work, and support them in their mission. Thanks for reading!

A couple of Fridays a month, I like to feature non-profits and changemakers on my blog to raise awareness of the great work they do, provide a dose of inspiration, and show that positive change is possible. Catch up on my other Feature Friday posts here.

This Friday, I would like to feature an incredible non-profit organization, the Southern Center for Human Rights (SCHR). From their website:

The Southern Center for Human Rights provides legal representation to people facing the death penalty, challenges human rights violations in prisons and jails, seeks through litigation and advocacy to improve legal representation for poor people accused of crimes, and advocates for criminal justice system reforms on behalf of those affected by the system in the Southern United States.

Considering my passion for criminal justice reform and the improvement of access to justice for the poor and marginalized, it’s clear that I think the SCHR is a great and much-needed organization. SCHR uses litigation to improve the criminal justice system, particularly when it comes to the application of the death penalty, unfair and inhumane prison and jail conditions, the right to competent legal counsel, debtors’ prisons (where people are imprisoned because of inability to pay fines), and fear-based policies spurred by policymakers who emphasize the need for public safety.

As you may know if you read this blog regularly, my particular passion centers around the right to high-quality legal counsel for all people, even the poor and marginalized. So it’s no surprise that one project of the SCHR, the Southern Public Defender Training Center (SPDTC), especially impressed me. The SPDTC trains newly minted public defenders throughout the south through a three-year training curriculum. Having worked with international organizations committed to improving access to justice by using a methodology of training public defenders in developing countries, I feel that this model can be incredibly effective in improving and expanding the quality of legal counsel available to the poor.

Check out the organization and it’s various projects, and I’m sure you’ll be impressed by their commitment to equal justice and criminal justice reform throughout the American South as well! The SCHR is a prime example of how litigation can be used to advocate for the rights of disadvantaged populations, and proves an effective model for non-profit law firms throughout the country.

Recently, the incredible Rosetta Thurman included me on her wonderful list of 32 Nonprofit & Philanthropy Blogs Written by People of Color - and I was incredibly honored and surprised by this gesture! Thanks again, Rosetta! But what was even more surprising to me was being clearly identified as a person of color!

In all honesty, my life experience has not shaped me to identify myself as a “person of color.” I moved to the U.S. at a young age from India, and since then have lived in safe suburban neighborhoods in a diverse region populated with immigrants and people of all different racial and ethnic backgrounds. In fact, although my parents worked extremely hard to rise up in this country, I have grown up in relative economic and political privilege. I grew up in the U.S. largely after the waves of hostility towards Indian-American immigrants had passed. Before my time, Indian immigrants were being called “dot heads” and other derogatory terms; by the time I got into middle school, I felt very integrated into my community and never experienced any hints of prejudice (or perhaps I was oblivious to it).

While I have a significant appreciation for the richness of Indian culture and the values my background imparted on me, I never felt fully Indian. I always loved American music, movies, television, history, politics, and books. I lived in a state and a town where I was literally surrounded by tons of other Indian Americans also growing up with a similar mix of Indian and American influences. I’ve always considered myself an American, and never felt singled out or ‘different’ because of my race throughout high school and my undergraduate years. I read about racism, and heard claims that “white people don’t know how lucky they are to be white,” but I never saw this in my own experience. Strange, but true. I was lucky. I never felt alone in forging my own unique racial and cultural identity.

Until now, that is. After graduation, I’ve chosen to enter the field of public interest, human rights, and civil rights law — a field with a conspicuous absence of Asian and Indian Americans. At a number of legal and civil rights non-profits I’ve worked at, I’ve been the only Indian American individual. Traditionally, South Asian Americans have leaned heavily towards the fields of science, medicine, technology, math, engineering, and finance. Of course, this is changing, and we are increasingly seeing more and more South Asians entering the fields of public interest law and politics as well. To name a few - Bobby Jindal, Nikki Haley, Fareed Zakaria, Kamala Harris, Mallika Dutt, Akhil Reed Amar, and many many more. Still, there is notably a lack of South Asian Americans in the non-profit sector; I see very few Indian Americans leading non-profit law firms or legal aid agencies. Most seem to be joining politics or academia.

Still, this is perhaps the first time in my life I have felt like a minority. My experience thus may be very different from the experiences of many others on Rosetta’s list, but I think she is absolutely right to encourage people of color to join the non-profit field. In particular, when it comes to the legal arena, we need more South Asians and Asian Americans to join the fight for human rights. After all, in many areas within public interest law - such as immigrant and refugee rights, fair housing, domestic violence, criminal justice, farmworker rights - our clients are poor people of color. It only makes sense for some of their attorneys to have a shared experience as a person of color. As the South Asian population grows in the U.S., we are going to need more lawyers who understand their language and the immigrant experience.

Ultimately, I hope that I can join a growing number of South Asian Americans who are venturing into the field of public interest law and politics despite the pressures to join the science, tech or business fields. While I have never before felt like a ‘person of color,’ Rosetta’s list reminded me that I am one after all — and that it’s becoming increasingly important to encourage South Asians to join the movement for social change. As we see the rise of more South American men and women to prominent public interest legal positions, I think we’ll see a broadening of perceptions within the South Asian community and an expansion of opportunities, passions, and ultimately - greater diversity within the non-profit legal field.

I just found an excellent and heartwrenching article about Haiti’s incarcerated minors, and more broadly the life-threatening prison conditions in Haitian prisons as well as the lack of legal infrastructure. As in so many other developing countries, innocent individuals are often wrongfully convicted and thrown in jail, only to languish in the face of inadequate legal aid and disease-ridden prison conditions. Here are a few notable quotes from the article:

Suze was arrested in May near the central plateau town of Mirebalais in the Haitian countryside. She was taken to the Pétionville Civil Prison in the capital, the country’s only penitentiary for women. She shares a 40 square foot cell with two thin mattresses and a hammock with a group of 15 girls, ages 11 to 17. The cell’s maximum capacity is four people according to Haiti’s National Human Rights Defense Network (RNDDH), which has denounced the prison’s conditions.

According to Marie-Yolaine Mathieu, the prison’s motherly but strict warden, “Nobody explained to Suze what was happening or how long she will be here.” Adding that it will likely take months for the girl to appear before a judge, Mathieu said she doesn’t know the details of the incident. She is overwhelmed by her job, tired, and skeptical of the justice system.

Like most inmates in Haitian jails, Suze’s detention is “preventive” and based on little evidence, Mathieu explains. Human Rights Watch reported in 2009 that more than 76 percent of Haitian inmates are pretrial detainees, a number bound to increase following the judiciary chaos caused by the earthquake.

“They just send people to prison and forget them here,” says Mathieu. Many inmates have spent years waiting to be tried for crimes for which the maximum sentence would be a few months. “The girls keep asking me, when will we be tried? How long will we be here?”

In an interview, Haiti’s chief prosecutor Auguste Aristidas, said the conditions of minors in jails are “intolerable.” He has been pushing the Ministry of Justice to intervene. He is also fighting illegal arrests and extended pretrial detentions. He added that he is reviewing each prisoner’s case, pointing to that of a 14-year-old boy who was recently rearrested after escaping in January. The boy had been held for months for stealing a gallon of cheap rum.

Aristidas said adequate resources to deal with juveniles are lacking at both the judicial and the penitentiary level. “Minors should not be tried by common tribunals but by tribunals for children.” When children are arrested, Aristidas added, basic rights such as food and sanitation should be assured. “We must create an environment where reeducation can really be effective,” he said.

Another good passage:

The situation is worse at the National Penitentiary in downtown Port-au-Prince, where 43 boys ages 13 to 17 share a “dirty, wet, and foul smelling cell,” according to the RNDDH. These young inmates are part of the 214 minors who escaped the Delmas Civil Prison for juveniles, destroyed by the earthquake. The National Penitentiary was also damaged and 1,211 prisoners – many of them rearrested after they escaped in January – now share six cells.

Marie Yolene Gilles, an advocate with the RNDDH, regularly lobbies with prison authorities to improve living conditions for underage inmates. Gilles criticizes the government for failing to protect incarcerated minors.

A hundred mattresses, still wrapped in plastic, line the walls of the office of the National Penitentiary director. A gift from Haitian-American singer Wyclef Jean, the mattresses have been sitting there for days. They are waiting for authorization from the director to bring some of the mattresses to the boys’ cells.

“Even if they do they won’t be able to fit them in those cells,” said Gilles, adding that inmates take turns sleeping because there is not enough room for all of them to lie down at the same time.

“There is no real will to change the situation,” Gilles later says, standing in the National Penitentiary’s steamy kitchen, checking with the cooks for the daily menu. Inmates are served two meals a day but have to rely on their families for drinking water or more varied nutrition. “Until I went on public radio to talk about it, all they got was rice, every day,” Gilles says.

A 2009 news article from Human Rights Watch reports that Haiti’s prison system is extremely overcrowded, with 8204 inmates held in a facility with a maximum capacity of 2448! Moreover, in two cities - Gonaïves and Petit Goâve - there are no prison or jail facilities, and as a result the police stations have been informally converted into detention centers. 274 individuals are detained at the Gonaïves, while the maximum capacity of the station is only 75. Prison conditions are harsh and unsanitary. There is insufficient room for all prisoners to sleep and stand at the same time. Prisoners are malnourished and must rely on food and water from family to survive. The spread of diseases like malaria and tuberculosis is common, but prisoners have little access to medical care. Torture is also widespread: the Institute of Justice and Democracy in Haiti reports that 40% of prisoners in three detention centers reported that they were tortured or abused (beaten with pistols, bottles, or sticks) by officers and government officials.

As you can see, the situation is heartbreaking, especially when it comes to juveniles who have committed minor crimes like petty theft and are essentially being punished with a death sentence - to die of disease and malnutrition in an overcrowded jail. Young people don’t deserve such harsh punishment - they need to be rehabilitated into society. For many young offenders, there is hope for reform … that is, until, they enter the prison system and become hardened, tortured, lifetime offenders with no other options; with no education, literacy or job training, what hope do they have to become productive members of society? Prison conditions like this are ineffective at best and life-threatening at worst. I’m very glad that this issue has been brought to light; more people need to be talking about unjust prison conditions in developing countries. Despite the gravity of the problem, there is little international attention to this issue. Articles like this in mainstream media are certainly the first step. I’d highly encourage you to read the entire article here. You can also read more about Haiti’s criminal justice system at Human Rights Watch.

A recent New York Times article describes the world of comfort - and perhaps even luxury - that war criminals are provided with at The Hague, Netherlands.

I don’t have a gym, a personal trainer, or a spiritual room in my tiny bedroom. On my (soon to be) non-profit salary, I certainly won’t be able to afford a visit to the Netherlands anytime in the near future. However, former warlords and human rights violators are getting all these amenities and more. Here’s a picture from the article of one of the “detention” cells in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). It looks to be about the same size as the room I currently live in, and it’s much better furnished.

The dorm and apartment-style living quarters provided to war criminals - such as Thomas Lubanga and Charles Taylor - who are being tried at the ICTY, the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) are downright luxurious, particularly compared to the poor living conditions suffered by the general population in the countries they come from (Sierra Leone and the DRC, for instance).

Perhaps worse, these individuals, who often own numerous properties and large sums of money hidden away in offshore accounts, are receiving free legal aid from the ICC which costs a minimum of €35,000 per month. And the most unsettling part of the story is that family members from Sierra Leone and the DRC receive travel subsidies to visit their detained relatives in the Hague. While I wholeheartedly believe that even warlords and human rights abusers should have the right to a fair trial and continue to enjoy their basic human rights, I too feel that these perks go too far.

Look at the living conditions in Sierra Leone, literally one of the poorest countries on the planet. Look at the quality of justice in many African countries, where individuals who are imprisoned for crimes like robbery, homosexuality, or even witchcraft are essentially sentenced to death simply because the conditions in prisons are so wretched. Where prisoners live in overcrowded rooms and own only one pair of clothing. Where sanitation is poor and diseases like HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis are prevalent. Where they receive perhaps one meal a day, a corn mush which completely lacks in any nutritional value. Where individuals can be held on remand - without even going to trial and being convicted - in similarly horrible conditions for years with no hope of ever seeing a lawyer.

I’m not saying that warlords don’t deserve fair trials, but that they shouldn’t be living in the lap of luxury when millions of people in the very countries they have terrorized are living in far more devastating poverty and suffering from horrible prison conditions.

It’s a shame that perpetrators of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity can play foosball, watch television, browse the internet whenever they prefer, and even enjoy conjugal visits with their wives — but that an individual who steals a piece of bread in the DRC might just die alone in prison of tuberculosis.

Where is the justice in this?