Top Ten Tips for a Career in the Human Rights Field

Top Ten Tips for a Career in the Human Rights Field

What are some of the most important steps towards finding a job in the human rights field? A few weeks ago, the Institute for the Study of Human Rights (ISHR) at Columbia University hosted a career panel aimed at answering this question. Five panelists were present to talk about their experiences in the human rights field: Zselyke Csaky: Senior Researcher, Nations in Transit, Freedom House Justin Mazzola: Deputy Director of Research, Amnesty International USA Debbie Sharnak: PhD candidate, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Adjunct Professor, Center for Global Affairs, New York University Allison Tamer: Development Officer, American Jewish World Service; Alumna of the Human Rights Studies M.A. Program Alexandra Yuster: Associate Director, Social Inclusion and Policy, UNICEF Here are our top ten takeaways. Acquiring skills for the job: 1.. Hone Your Research and Writing Skills Don't expect much opportunity to develop your research and writing skills on the field beyond perfecting them. Use your time in academia to hone these skills instead. Justin recommends getting practice doing interviews, not only with survivors but also with advocates and government officials, as this will help develop the skill of knowing what you need from...
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Access to Justice: the Indigenous Perspective

Access to Justice: the Indigenous Perspective

By Hannah Khaw, a political science and music major at Columbia University. The term “justice” often brings to mind images of austere judges in their robes and eloquent lawyers with their clients, seated formally within stately courthouses. Such has been the influence of contemporary law upon our conception of what justice truly entails. However, can justice be pursued through channels other than the default ones that our modern society has conditioned us to accept? Numerous indigenous peoples’ groups all over the world seem to think so: for hundreds of years, justice has been meted out in these communities through indigenous courts and other tribal councils that are starkly different from the modern legal systems imposed on them in more recent times. With this in mind, then, states and international organizations such as the United Nations should arguably make provisions for indigenous peoples to have adequate access to justice not just in the conventional legal sense, but also within their own traditional contexts. However,...
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Kagame’s third term bid and the African Union’s silence

Kagame’s third term bid and the African Union’s silence

By Sylvester Uhaa, former Human Rights Advocate at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights, at Columbia University ____________________________________________ I read with concern a report regarding a referendum to amend Article 101 of the Rwandan Constitution to allow President Paul Kagame another seven year term. A few days ago, the Rwandan Senate voted to allow him a third term. Kagame ascended to power in 2003 and was re-elected in 2010. By 2017, he will have spent 14 years in power as President. With the referendum likely to be in his favour, his victory at the polls will allow him to be president for 21 years. It was with great discomfort that I first heard about this on CCTV News last April, at the peak of the political turmoil in Burundi, following President Pierre Nkurunziza’s similar moves for a third term. Nkurunziza succeeded, but not without the bloodshed of thousands of people, with thousands more continuing flee the country for safety. As the crises heightened, the...
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The Saddest Bride I Have Ever Seen…

The Saddest Bride I Have Ever Seen…

By Sameera Uddin, graduate student of Human Rights at Columbia University ___________________________________________________________________________ "In Bangladesh, 65% of girls are married before they turn 18." (UNICEF) "She was withdrawn, quiet, and appeared very sad throughout the entire day," said Allison Joyce, an American photojournalist who documented the wedding of 15-year-old Nasoin Akhter to a 32-year-old man, in her blog. The international community greeted Joyce’s photos of Nasoin’s wedding with shock and disappointment. According to UNICEF, nearly one-third of Bangladeshi girls are married by the age of 15, the highest rate for that age group in the world. South Asia is home to almost half (42 per cent) of all child brides worldwide, and India alone accounts for one-third of the global total. Currently, it is illegal for girls to get married under the age of 18 in Bangladesh, yet the statistics suggest that the reality is otherwise. Why is it that a country often highlighted as a development success story is facing these challenges? Bangladesh has reduced...
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Blood Timber: A Resource Curse

Blood Timber: A Resource Curse

By Rachel Riegelhaupt, graduate student of Human Rights at Columbia University ___________________________________________________________________________ When asked about buying conflict-timber from the Central African Republic during an undercover investigation led by Global Witness, a representative from the French manufacturing company Tropical Bois responded, “It’s Africa. War is so common we don’t really pay attention...it’s not a war where they attack white people. It’s not a war we have to avoid.” The Central African Republic (CAR) has been plagued by violence since November 2012, when predominately Muslim Seleka rebels began to take up arms. In March 2013, they overthrew the president in a bloody coup d’état and pursued a campaign of violence throughout the nation, provoking a violent backlash from the Christian Anti-Balaka militia in September 2013. Although a transitional government is currently in place, with the Seleka’s leader Michel Djotodia serving as interim president, the balance of power is still rocked by clashes between ever-present armed groups. War atrocities such as the use of child soldiers,...
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The Enforced Disappearance of Human Rights in the World

The Enforced Disappearance of Human Rights in the World

By Marina Kumskova, graduate student of human rights at Columbia University ___________________________________________________________________________ Between March 2002 and July 2004, eight individuals of Chechen origin were “arrested by groups of armed and masked men in a manner resembling a security operation”. Pointing guns at the family members, the soldiers took men away in military carriers. Similarly, on April 28, 1991, Jeremías Osorio Rivera was officially detained by a military patrol when he went to the village of Nunumia to take part in a sports event. He was accused of making a terrorist threat for carrying an officially registered gun and explosives materials. None of these men have been seen or heard from since, despite their families’ tireless efforts to find them. In both cases, the males were abducted and detained by armed men without arrest warrant, held in solitary confinement under mortifying circumstances for unidentified periods of time, and deprived of legal assistance or any other contact with the outside world. In both cases, after the abduction of...
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How the Iran Deal Affects Ordinary People’s Lives in Iran

How the Iran Deal Affects Ordinary People’s Lives in Iran

By Roya Pakzad, graduate student of human rights at Columbia University ___________________________________________________________________________ Earlier this week, President Obama gathered enough votes for the Iran Deal, by securing the support of 34 Senators and thus the ability to sustain a veto in Congress. According to the deal, Iran will significantly limit its nuclear program activities. In return, the international community will lift oil and financial sanctions that have been imposed on Iran for more than a decade. For many people around the world this news showed the victory of diplomacy over aggression. For me it was an instant journey two years into the past, when I received a call from Iran informing me that my 41 year-old cousin, Azim, was suffering from liver cancer. There was not sufficient medical access, no way to receive the necessary medications through official International postage, and the currency was falling to a record low, making dollars hard to come by and proliferating black markets for fake medications. And it is this...
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Against Superlatives: Canada, Rankings, and the Buzzfeed-isation of Human Rights Reporting

Against Superlatives: Canada, Rankings, and the Buzzfeed-isation of Human Rights Reporting

By Tim Wyman-McCarthy, graduate student of human rights at Columbia University ___________________________________________________________________________ I confess: I AM CANADIAN! Anyone from my homeland will recognise the reference to the well known Molson Canadian beer commercials, starting with “There’s an unwritten code in Canada…” and then depicting young men and women fulfilling classic ‘Canadian’ stereotypes—playing hockey, owning beavers, being polite, enduring cold, paddling canoes, outwitting Americans—before shouting, emphatically, that they are Canadian! The commercial was part of a surge in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s to conjure a sense of Canadian identity out of a population (in)famous for its lack of nationalism. The joke was that being Canadian meant nothing very much at all, and the commercials were self-deprecating even as they aimed to foster patriotism. To anyone globally aware or keyed into international politics, however, Canada did have a strong identity: multicultural, progressive, tolerant, peacekeeping, generous, democratic. The nation has boasted wide respect in the human rights community for decades, and our Prime Minister from 1963-1968,...
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On their 40th Anniversary, the Helsinki Accords retain a powerful legacy

On their 40th Anniversary, the Helsinki Accords retain a powerful legacy

By Raymond A. Smith, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Political Science at Columbia and NYU ___________________________________________________________________________ The signing of the Helsinki Accords on August 1, 1975 has little of the resonance today of such landmark events of the Cold War as the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the rise of the Solidarity Trade Union Movement in 1981, or of the uprisings in Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Hungary in 1956. Yet on their fortieth anniversary, the Helsinki Accords deserve to be remembered alongside those events. And, in some ways, they have even more enduring relevance for world order and for human rights. The Helsinki Accords had their roots in the refusal of the US and its allies to accept the legality of the new borders and regimes imposed by the Soviet Red Army when it occupied the three Baltic states and six countries in Eastern Europe. American rhetoric in the early Cold War often referred to these as “captive nations” that were suffering under...
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#ThisIsACoup: Greece, a dangerous precedent for human rights in Europe

#ThisIsACoup: Greece, a dangerous precedent for human rights in Europe

By Alexis Comninos, graduate student of human rights at Columbia University ___________________________________________________________________________ This past weekend has been decisive for the future of Greece—perhaps, as some say, the most important few days in the country’s recent history. Through the Greek deal, this weekend saw the EU define its take on human rights, and the result isn’t pretty. Waking up this Monday morning is the closest I have felt to a terrible hangover (it’s not that I don’t drink, I just don’t get hangovers—call it my superpower). I do not just say this as a Greek citizen, but simply as a socially minded individual, someone who until this morning still had faith in the European project. The outcome of this weekend’s negotiations has struck a huge blow to all hopes of meaningful, sustainable recovery for Greece. It has also irreversibly damaged the idea of Europe, the possibility of the EU ever becoming more than an exploitative project driven by the ideology of a few in Brussels,...
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