Editor – RightsViews

On International Day of Peace, A Celebration of Human Rights

September 21, 2018September 29, 2018 by Editor1 Comment

By Ashley E. Chappo, editor of RightsViews and a graduate of Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs and Columbia Journalism School Human rights, specifically the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), are the focus of this year's International Day of Peace, or “Peace Day,” which takes place across the world each year on September 21. This UN-designated day of observance advocates peace action and education in spite of ongoing human conflict through peace-building activities, a global minute of silence, intercultural and interfaith dialogues, vigils, concerts, feasts, and marches. This year’s theme is "The Right to Peace - The Universal Declaration of Human Rights at 70." The timing for the theme is apropos: it comes at a period when the human condition is increasingly vulnerable, beset by global conflict and dependent on world leaders who have turned their backs on international cooperation. During this state of prolonged human suffering, the power and failings of a single document of 30 human rights ideals...

Columbia Students Stand in Solidarity with Jailed Reuters Journalists

September 14, 2018February 4, 2019 by EditorNo Comments

By Ashley E. Chappo, editor of RightsViews and a graduate of Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs and Columbia Journalism School Walk into Pulitzer Hall lobby at Columbia Journalism School today, and you might notice the students dressed in all black, holding signs that read “#FreeWaLoneKyawSoeOo” and "Journalism is not a crime." It’s a moment of advocacy and solidarity on Columbia’s Morningside campus on behalf of Reuters journalists Wa Lone, 32, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, who were sentenced to seven years in prison on September 3, 2018 by a Myanmar judge after being found guilty of violating a decades-old law on state secrets. The Burmese nationals had been investigating military crackdowns and human rights violations in Rakhine state, including the massacre of 10 Rohingya men in Rakhine's Inn Dinn village on September 2, 2017. The advocacy effort at the journalism school in New York City was organized mainly by students in professor Ann Cooper's reporting class. Beginning at 11 a.m. in Pulitzer...

Children Languishing Behind Bars: A Grim Reality of Indian Prisons

September 6, 2018September 29, 2018 by EditorNo Comments

By Vasudev Singh and Karan Trehan, students of law in India at RML National Law University and NALSAR University of Law, respectively. A recent revelation by the Government of India concerns the condition of children residing in prisons with their mothers and raises an important question regarding the basic human rights guaranteed to these children. As of 2015, Indian prisons accommodate some 419,623 prisoners (including pre-trial detainees/remand prisoners). Out of them, 4.3 percent— or around 18,000— are women. Women who face trial or who are found guilty of a crime are allowed to keep their children with them during their time in jail. Approximately 1,866 children lived in prison with their mothers at the end of 2015, according to prison statistics. According to the Indian constitution, the state governments are assigned to the administration and management of prisons. This means that the state governments can make prison laws according to their own discretion and requirements. However, these state powers remain subject to other centrally-enacted laws such as the Prisons Act, 1894. As a result,...

Lives in Limbo: Immigration as a Human Rights Issue

July 30, 2018September 29, 2018 by EditorNo Comments

"Trump Zero Tolerance," artwork by Dan Lacey // Flickr By Jalileh Garcia, a blog writer for RightsViews and an undergraduate student at Columbia University In late June, the event “Lives in Limbo: Immigration as a Human Rights Issue” took place in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The event was a direct response to the current administration’s immigration policies, which were highlighted by the recent and highly controversial separation of children from their parents. In the last couple of months, photographs and voice recordings of children crying “Mami” and “Papa” have overtaken the web. The children, predominantly from Central American countries, some as young as 18 months old, have become the focal point of the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” policy. Courts set a deadline for July 26 to reunite the children with their families, but the government has stated that hundreds of families were ineligible to be united. In total, 711 children remain in custody, according to the latest tally from the government. Furthermore, many of the children who have...

Ensuring Healthcare in India by Going Beyond Politics

July 19, 2018September 29, 2018 by EditorNo Comments

By Ananye Krishna, a student at Nalsar University of Law, Hyderabad, India The government of India launched the Ayushman Bharat - National Health Protection Mission in late March 2018 to provide health coverage of Rs. 5 Lakh (or approximately $7,335) per year for all Indian families. This was a much needed reform measure in the Indian healthcare system, but the question remains whether the government made required infrastructural changes in order to ensure the full benefits that would allow the Indian people to access their fundamental human rights to healthcare. The poor state of healthcare in India was illustrated last year when more than 60 children died in a government hospital because of inadequate infrastructure. This was not an isolated incident. There have been cases of fires breaking out in hospitals and of surgeries being conducted en masse under extremely poor conditions. Such incidents demonstrate that the right to health as guaranteed by the Indian constitution is being violated through lack of adequate reform. Reports suggest that...

Will Brexit Setback Human Rights Protections in the United Kingdom?

June 21, 2018September 29, 2018 by EditorNo Comments

Brian Dan is a guest contributor from the University of Strathclyde and a L.L.M. candidate in human rights law Is Brexit just a snag in European Union integration without accompanying regression in human rights legislation? Of course not. Brexit signals a backsliding in human rights protections and imperils the closest thing to a constitutional framework for human rights in the United Kingdom. The U.K. has over 40 years of EU law transposed into its own laws. Together, the EU laws, which are supreme to the domestic laws of the EU states; the Common Law system of England and Wales, which is law created by judges in courts; and the legislative directives of the Council of Europe, an international organization comprised of 47 European states, constitute an overarching, legally-binding system for the promotion, respect and protection of fundamental human rights and freedoms. The human rights protections provided to British citizens by the U.K.’s membership in the EU and Council of Europe are distinct but also...

Columbia’s First-Ever Indigenous Mother Tongues Book Fair

May 23, 2018September 29, 2018 by EditorNo Comments

by Marial Quezada, an Indigenous ally and a 2018 graduate of the Human Rights Studies program at Columbia University In late April, the first-ever Mother Tongues Book Fair took place at Columbia University, organized by the Runasimi Outreach Committee at New York University and the New York-based Movimientos Indigenas Asociados in collaboration with the Institute for the Study of Human Rights and the Columbia Human Rights Graduate Group. Coinciding with the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues 2018, the fair celebrated written works in Indigenous mother tongues from various communities and geographic regions. Languages represented at the fair included Amharic, Arikara, Crow, Hidatsa, Lakota, Mandan, Maya Mam, Mixteco, Nahuatl, Omaha-Ponca, Quechua, Tsou, and Zapoteca. Authors along with publishers displayed and sold a variety of mother tongue works including trilingual and bilingual children’s books, poetry anthologies, novels, zines, dictionaries, CDs, and more. The fair's goal was to raise awareness of Indigenous mother tongues and works as well as to connect authors and publishers with each other and the...

#MeToo – Now What? From Outcry to Action

April 25, 2018September 29, 2018 by EditorNo Comments

By Sharon Song, an MA student in Human Rights Studies at Columbia University “I was an optimistic, driven, hardworking and ambitious young woman, determined to pursue a career in acting… I found myself relentlessly harassed… My life and career was in the hands of people intent on destruction, people who judged and vilified me in ways they never would have done if I was a man… I fought back, I got privacy laws changed.” – Sienna Miller, Actress & Activist On the final day at the 62nd UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), the United Nations’ largest gathering on gender equality and women’s rights, the energy and anticipation was almost palpable. Journalists and activists convened at the UN headquarters to snatch a seat at a side-event discussing women in the media. Since the tidal wave of #MeToo posts sprung up last fall in the wake of Harvey Weinstein’s sexual perpetrations against dozens of women, activists across the nation and around the...

Art/Law and Human Rights: Dialogues on Being Human

April 19, 2018September 29, 2018 by EditorNo Comments

Dakota Porter is a MA student in Human Rights Studies at Columbia University On April 9, Columbia Law School hosted visiting professor Amal Clooney in conversation with the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, for a discussion on the international legal projects of the United Nations. That same day, in a small space on the 24th floor of a Chinatown office building, artist and educator Pablo Helguera gave a talk with legal scholar and human rights activist Alicia Ely Yamin at Artsy, an organization at the intersection of art and technology. The conversation between Clooney and the High Commissioner was both realistic (read: frank) and hopeful, but coverage is also due to a topic still fairly under-documented in the field: the relationship between arts, human rights and law. During the discussion at Artsy, Helguera, a New York-based Mexican artist and museum educator at MoMA, introduced his work, followed by an interrogation of his subject matter and processes with Yamin, a professor at...

Israel’s Two Minutes Hate: Netanyahu Reneges on Refugee Deal

April 10, 2018September 29, 2018 by Editor1 Comment

by Ido Dembin, a blog writer for RightsViews and a M.A. student in Human Rights Studies at Columbia University During the climax of 1984’s “Two Minutes Hate,” the image of the despised enemy of the state, the cowardly traitor (and probably the entirely made-up) Emmanuel Goldstein, is replaced with that of the supreme leader— the beloved, worshipped, unparalleled Big Brother. This infamous scene from George Orwell’s dystopian society is grotesque, violent and extremely emotionally charged. Yet it is this same scene currently flashing across the Israeli social network in reality. The role of Goldstein is being played by an NGO called the "New Israel Fund" (NIF), and the part of Big Brother is, appropriately, occupied by another "BB"— Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister. The book 1984 has experienced quite a rejuvenation of late. Perhaps it is in preparation for the 70th anniversary of its publication, or maybe it is the never-ending war, the terribly partisan political sphere or just a few certain...