Human Rights and the "Other"

Credit: International Network of Liberal Women

In recent weeks, Human Rights Watch and Bill Gates released two reports on global poverty and the most pressing rights struggles of 2013. In Davos, some of the highest-earning and most powerful leaders of the world convened for the World Economic Forum.

Yet, as I live my life here in Paris, having completed a Master's degree focusing on human rights at the end of last year while at the same time undergoing a heart surgery, I contemplate what human rights means to me personally versus others. How much overlap is there between developing versus developed nations? How can I fully live within and access my own rights in a country that is not even my own? What I have come up with as I train in the park near my pink cottage, sending resume after resume, networking, flying to Rome to be with my French boyfriend who works for the United Nations and is also seeking long-term employment in his own country, trying to build the rest of a dream after significant resiliency most of my life, is how blurred the line is between those in need of accessing and fully realizing human rights standards. These are the people I love, live near, and work alongside.

The past few days the American news has been shaped by an announcement that AOL had reversed a decision regarding 401ks to its employees after a media frenzy regarding CEO Tim Armstrong's comment that,

Two things that happened in 2012. We had two AOL-ers that had distressed babies that were born that we paid a million dollars each to make sure those babies were OK in general. And those are the things that add up into our benefits cost. So when we had the final decision about what benefits to cut because of the increased healthcare costs, we made the decision, and I made the decision, to basically change the 401(k) plan.

The mother of the "distressed baby," Novelist Deanna Fei, published an eloquent and very brave response to her husband's employer in Slate magazine. Her husband, Peter S. Goodman, is the Executive Business and and Global News Editor of AOL's Huffington Post. The Goodmans are known to me because Arnold and Elise Goodman, the grandparents of the "distressed baby" girl, were the couple who gave me very my first job in publishing when I was nineteen years old. I worked from their home as their Literary Agency Assistant, and the position was a lifelong dream for this rural girl from a chaotic childhood with little resources earning and financing my undergraduate degree in Manhattan. I filed their contracts, letters to their children, answered their phone calls from the authors of the What to Expect When You're Expecting series, sent out rejection letters, and learned about publishing from two people who had made a wonderful life from it. They had a beautiful apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, two wonderful children, and to my young eyes they were living the good life.

Enter the life of their own grandchild. As an advocate for children's health, I was aghast reading the AOL CEO's comment but was not surprised. The state of healthcare in my own country is one of the most brutal abuses of rights in a wealthy and developed nation that exists. So is the cost of education. Enter where I live currently so as to actually complete a Master's degree before I turned 35. When I had my heart surgery last year, I was also a student who paid nothing to have that surgery. I had suffered from supraventricular tachycardia since I was seventeen years old but still went on to race ultramarathons and build running teams in support of women and children's health. But around the end of 2012, as my hormones shifted and I worked freelance while earning my degree and trained teams of ex-pat runners, I began to have heart episodes much more frequently. When my sisters' were visiting me last March and I looked up at my baby sister's worried face sprawled on a Parisian sidewalk in full-on tachycardia, I began to think the time had come to fix my heart. Then I read online that when I am pregnant someday my baby would also go without oxygen and experience the same horrendous effects I did when the tachycardia occurred plus it could affect the child's development; I knew it was time to have heart surgery.

A Conversation on Congo with Kate, Model and Human Rights Advocate

Kate is pictured here visiting the Grassroots Reconciliation Group in Uganda.

Since last November, the over decade-long conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo has once again surged. The latest outbreaks are forcing displacement of hundreds of thousands of Congolese people, escalating already rampant sexual violence, and creating larger death tolls. Since 1998, the conflict in Congo has resulted in the death of 5.4 million people. Cumulatively, this is a higher death count than the total number of lives lost throughout all of World War II.

The United Nations recently expanded its peacekeeping mission in the DRC. Yet, it is the work of NGOs, individuals, and those passionate to make lasting change in Congo who also lead the way for urgent change. In this new series, Her Blueprint talks with people who have chosen to take on Congo as advocates. Their lives are entwined with the DRC, showing that no matter where or who we are, we share our world.

Kate Tickel is co-founder of Congo-Sourced, Conflict-Free, a model, mother of a young son, and a human rights advocate based in Los Angeles. Last year, she was nominated for the Trust Women Hero Award, announced at the Trust Woman Conference in London. Kate recently answered some questions about why she is so dedicated to advocating for Congolese women and for conflict-free minerals in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Her Blueprint: Can you share a bit of your journey to how Congo in particular has come to be your focus and your current activities surrounding advocacy? As mentioned, I believe you started your own organization and are working with the Nobel Women's Initiative?

Kate:  My journey into advocacy has been very personal, and so informed by my own experiences as a woman and a mother. I was always a little in love with Africa. I read Gorillas in the Mist, about Dian Fossey and the silverback gorillas in Rwanda, as a girl. I fell in love with the entirety of that story: with Dian, with gorillas (I was and still am an enormous animal lover), with the descriptions of Rwanda and the mists and mountains. I was from rural Tennessee and there was something in my bones that understood eastern Africa intuitively, that mix of beauty and poverty. Then I read Philip Gourevitch's book We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed Our Families. It was an impossible story to recover from; it set a seed for activism. I had joined Amnesty International by the time I was ten or so. While I was still a teenager, I moved to Los Angeles to model, and started to travel constantly. I always had one foot in activism; I was always the girl in the makeup chair talking about Zaire. But there was no particular focus except the next job; I had such a peripatetic, gypsy lifestyle. And then motherhood happened, impossibly, at a young age, (I'd been told that because of a medical condition motherhood could never happen). I didn't necessarily feel a connection to other mothers, but for the first time I felt a strong connection to womanhood and to other women, this shared experience of being female. I noticed myself becoming fiercely protective of other women.

And then about three years ago I saw the headline for an blog post, "Does Your Cell Phone Contribute to Rape?," and I clicked on it. It was a brief article detailing what was happening in the Democratic Republic of Congo, how five and a half million people had been killed in the conflict there, about how gender violence was being used as a weapon of war, and about how the minerals being looted by the armed gangs there were in just about every piece of electronics on the market. It was an epiphany; I don't know how often in life we know the moment when our life has just changed, but I knew it to be that moment. All the air went out of the room. Who would ever look at their laptop and say, "I wonder how many girls were raped in the manufacturing of this laptop?" My first reaction was that fierce protectiveness over those women and girls; I couldn't sleep that first night, thinking of them. Thinking, "These women are so much more than the worst thing that has happened to them."

It took a few months of immersing myself in every lecture, every conference, every white paper, every book on not just Congo but the nature of conflict, gender violence and genocide; my education is still constantly ongoing. In the meantime I was talking to everyone I knew about Congo, and about "conflict minerals" (also known as the 3TGs: tin, tungsten, tantalum and gold). Groups like the Enough Project and Human Rights Watch had been instrumental in passing Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act, which requires companies to disclose if the minerals in their products are sourced from Congo. Companies were citing overwhelm at the prospect of having to audit their supply chain, there were several regulatory agencies whose criterion had to be met to certify the minerals as clean, and confusion about the auditing process. In the meantime, there were concerns about the possibility of a de facto embargo happening in the Kivu provenances of eastern Congo, which is the most conflicted area; companies might just wash their hands of the whole issue and stop buying from Congo altogether, which would hurt the mine workers already the most vulnerable. So I worked with a risk management company to develop an audit process that would integrate all the regulatory agency supply chain templates, while building in a provision that encourages companies to source from Congo, and that's how Congo-Sourced, Conflict-Free happened.

Along the way, I became aware of a group called Stop Rape in Conflict, which addresses gender violence and rape as a weapon of war. They were hosting a panel in New York with the Nobel Women's Initiative, and I was able to meet Jody Williams, and Dr. Denis Mukwenge, who runs the Panzi hospital in Congo. That was a huge moment. The two groups are working together on a United Nations initiative, The International Campaign to Stop Rape and Gender Violence in Conflict. If you've never met Jody Williams, you don't know how impossible she is to decline; when she says "You need to come work on this campaign," you go work on the campaign. It's incredibly inspiring to be working with so many strong women, the activists and Peace Laureates who came before you.

Her Blueprint: I know you recently visited DRC. Can you share one experience there that elucidates why you are so committed to advocating for a conflict-free Congo?

Kate: The Democratic Republic of Congo is one of the most beautiful places in the world. There is one piece of folklore that posits that Eden was there, and when you see the waterfalls and complete verdancy, the constant petrichor, the elephants and gorillas, you believe that Congo could be heaven on earth. How is this haven the rape capitol of the world? How can these beautiful jungles harbor such violent militias? When I was first in Goma my driver and I got on very well. He and his wife had just had their first child, a little girl, and he wanted me to meet his family, so I went to their home. My son is French-speaking, as are the Congolese, and when I walked into the house the first thing I heard was the humming of the same French lullabye, "Bonsoir Bon Nuit," that I had sung to my little one when he was a baby. I started singing it too. The world is so small. We sing the same lullabyes. We all live in the same house.

What Razan Ghazzawi Can Teach Us about Taking Action

Razan during The 3rd Arab Bloggers Meeting Oct. 2011, in Tunis. (Photo: Flickr - Ibtihel Zaatouri)

If you haven't heard the story yet, Razan Ghazzawi is the latest among a dozen bloggers, activists, and journalists who have been detained since the nine month uprising calling for the ousting of President Bashar Assad erupted in March.

Ghazzawi was detained on Dec. 4 at the Jordanian border by Syrian immigration as she tried to cross into Jordan to attend a conference on press freedom in the Arab world. Currently, she is being held in Adra prison and faces a potential 3- to -15-year prison sentence.

On Monday, Syrian authorities charged Ghazzawi with membership to a secret organisation, which aims to change the economic and social status of the state, conveying within Syria false news that could debilitate the morale of the nation and weakening national sentiment, violating Article 335 of the Syrian penal code -- banning participation in a riotous demonstration -- and inciting sectarian strife.


Who is Razan?
Razan, 31, is a blogger, feminist and human rights activist who has campaigned for the release of political prisoners and documented human rights abuses.

Prominent Egyptian blogger Zeinobia praises Razan's revolutionary spirit:

Razan has been active and outspoken when it comes to injustice. She is among a few Syrian bloggers that blog with her real name. She is U.S. born yet she is an Arab leftist nationalist. I think Razan Ghazzawi is the second female Syrian blogger to be arrested after Tal Malhoi.

I remember once, during the revolution in Egypt, Razan tweeted about how she and her family were glued in front of the TV every afternoon till late night watching Tahrir square in those 18 days and how she cried when Mubarak was ousted. Razan is another Syrian, among thousands of Syrians, detained for no reason except they want freedom and democracy.

Since 2009, Razan has been maintaining Razaniyyat where she blogs, mainly in English, about human rights, women's and gay rights, as well as Arab and Syrian affairs. She is also the media coordinator for the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression.

Syrian Uprising
On Wednesday, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, urged the United Nations (UN) Security Council to refer Syria to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity. The call comes as the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) prepares to release a report also calling for Syria's referral to the ICC.

According to recent UN statistics, the brutal crackdown has left more than five thousand dead while thousands more continue to languish in prison. Today alone, violence across Syria has killed at least twenty-five people and the death toll is rising by the minute.


Time to Take Action
Since Razan's arrest, more than four thousand people have joined the Facebook campaign Free Syrian Blogger & Activist Razan Ghazzawi and started an online petition to demand intervention by the Arab League and the US government.

Twitter users have also launched the hashtag #FreeRazan to show solidarity.

As you can see, Razan was a person of action. So here's a list of ways that you can also take action:

• Write an email or send a fax to your local politician, Foreign Minister, members of parliament of congress. Use the internet to find their contact details or see this list of emails. Razan is an American Citizen – here is a list of US Embassies to contact demanding they take urgent action.
• Use your profile photo to draw attention to Razan’s arrest and the plight of all prisoners in Syria via Twibbon or you can use this image, or make your own.
• Use the tag #FreeRazan to share links, videos, news from #Syria – keep attention levels UP, don’t let this important news be overpowered by other stories and fade from view.
• Post news and links to FaceBook, blog, forums, and in comments on videos and news posts about Syria. If you write, please write about this issue.
• Schedule tweets for when you can’t be online – use Dlvr IT for feeds or Buffer for individual tweets. Also, Razan’s twitter account is currently being managed by her friends and supporters. Follow her if you’re not already @RedRazan for important updates.
• Join the Free Razan FaceBook page and share the page with all your friends.

If you have more ideas, please share them here.

Domestic Workers Find their Own Means of Empowerment

Chandrani speaking at a Taste Culture event

In the Middle East, where widespread abuse of female migrant domestic workers is commonplace, Jordan positioned itself as leader in protecting workers rights when it introduced laws in 2008 that called for regulated hours, a day off and criminalisation of human trafficking.

However, a recent report by the New York-based Human Rights Watch and Jordan's Tamkeen Centre for Legal Aid cites complaints of physical and sexual abuse, house confinement, non-payment of salaries and long working hours.

According to the 110-page report, failure on the part of Jordanian officials to enforce labour laws put in place to protect female migrants are in fact 'facilitating abuse'.

Currently, more than 70,000 female migrant domestic workers from Sri Lanka, Indonesia and the Philippines are employed in the kingdom.

Pushed by a need to support their families, female migrant domestic workers leave their countries, children and lives to care for another household.

The issue of migrant domestic work is a personal issue for me. More than fifteen years ago while living on the streets in the United States and without any legal identification, I turned to cleaning houses as a means of supporting myself. When I lived in the home, I usually slept on the sofa and worked all the day without receiving a single pay. For these individuals, providing me with a place to sleep was sufficient enough. At times, I was subjected to verbal abuse and even sometimes molestation. Eventually, I would run away and end up on the streets once more.

Five years ago, when I arrived in the Middle East from New York it was not my intention to highlight the plight of these women. However, my treatment in Lebanon--when I was viewed as a servant whenever I walked the streets, or sleeping on the sofa in the home of three fellow foreigners, cooking and cleaning in exchange for board--triggered something in me.

HOPE FOR HAITI

"I’m hopeful about Haiti because by just four weeks after the quake, there were already women setting up tables, showing support to each other, offering help. That resilience, that re-emerging of women as caregivers for the sick and elderly, as people who draw communities together—the women’s movement for Haiti is still there. If we can find ways to help the Haitian women rebuild their movement, the movement will be a tremendous power for change." --Liesl Gerntholtz