As part of our ‘500 Ways to Summer’ series Victoria Elliot explains the work of Human Rights Watch where she interned this Summer…
Illustration by Mice Hell
Victoria Elliot
Contributing Writer
Human Rights Watch is not a charity that feeds people, or clothes people, or physically puts a roof over their heads. It is one that aims to change society on a fundamental level and to change political culture around the world. It works in the grass roots and then takes its findings to the top, investigating abuses in dangerous and isolated locations then brazenly advocating for a greater justice all around the world.
My placement there happened because this summer I did a course at London School of Economics (optional exams again after Schols – I must be mad!), part of which was to write a dissertation. I chose to research global compliance with international human rights regimes. This is so much more than a theoretical interest for me, however.
A year ago I read Caitlin Moran’s How to be a Woman and it lit a fire in me – as it does for most who read it. I am a girl obsessed with feminism. It’s a passion that often invites debate at home, but all agree that in many parts of the world the fact of women’s subordination is undeniable. And so, I started the internship imbued with an ardour for one area of human rights, eager to learn more.
The office was filled with people from all over the world. There were researchers and advocates coming and going week-by-week; stopping off on their way from New York to Berlin, or Washington to Uganda.
I met those who research in the most dangerous parts of Libya – “I tell my team never to use the internet where they sleep as there’s a great danger of being located by satellite” – who are fighting the use of rape as a weapon of war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and who organise advocacy on a global level in areas from LGBT rights in Africa to ‘deportations with assurances’ in the UK.
This fluidity and constant interaction made for a comfortable and friendly dynamic, and information was always flowing. There were about ten other interns coming and going, a substantial proportion of the small office. We were mainly undergraduates and Master’s students and were in three or four days a week each. This was another opportunity to meet people from across the earth, with their own stories to tell.
Indeed, it is this pervasive global presence that is central to such an organisation. It is on the power of language and words that Human Rights Watch relies.
In the field, communications are key: question, understand, write down, send on. In the office, communications are key: listen, read, understand, advocate.
The reports make the most effective use of the many languages into which they are translated: they must be detailed but pithy, informative but interest catching. These reports are communicated to the next level – MPs, peers, the Department for International Development, the Foreign Office and any journalists that seem interested. Following this, we see questions in parliamentary debates, articles in widely read newspapers increasing public awareness and hopefully, in the long term, a policy shift for the better.
Most prominent this year has been the report released on Syria: Torture Archipelago. The report is based on more than two hundred interviews gathered in Syria since March 2011. By identifying the locations of twenty-seven state-run detention facilities (even going so far as to name the commanders in charge), this damning report revealed that there is a pervasive state-wide policy of torture and mistreatment of citizens in Syria that is a gross violation of their basic human rights. It generated a record number of hits on the Human Rights Watch website and was widely discussed in national newspapers and on programmes. Of course, change is yet to happen but it is at least in the forefront of public debate.
The ones that do not garner such attention are equally important. Well known is the fiscal crisis in Greece, but Human Rights Watch recently released a report about ‘Greece’s other crisis’: Hate on the Streets. The xenophobic violence on the streets in Greek cities is increasing and migrants are scared to go outside at night. Yet the police have failed to protect victims or hold their racist attackers to account.
Racism as such is clearly a problem of culture rather than law, but a report like this can advocate for a change of policy and therefore kick-start a vital social change.
As an intern, every day I combed through parliamentary discourses looking for the latest ‘HR friendly’ MPs and peers to communicate with. I saw the importance of the debates and questions in the Houses of Parliament in getting human rights onto the policy agenda, although the vagaries of answers were sometimes unsettling.
For example, when I attended an oral evidence session of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the Minister for Human Rights was not familiar with the fact that both Saudi Arabia and Libya feature both on the Department for Business list of top arms export markets and on the FCO’s list of countries of concern for human rights. You would think this was an important and basic issue to be aware of in that position – not to mention the fact that this paradox somewhat undermines the credibility of the government’s human rights policy.
Perhaps the most unsettling moment was when a large number of Tory MPs fought the appointment of an EU Special Representative for Human Rights. That human rights would be the ‘silver thread’ running through all policies was Baroness Ashton’s promise in 2009. This position (now given to Stavros Lambrinis) would surely be a positive step in the keeping of that promise. But pervasive in the UK is a sensationalist euro-scepticism, as is illustrated repeatedly in the right-wing press, even to the detriment of progress such as this.
It was experiences such as these that made me further understand an aspect of political life within parliament that is so undesirable: the powerlessness either because of the party line or because of what the government has defined as the ‘public interest’.
Nonetheless, watching the issues we advocated for making it into the newspapers, and being asked about in the Houses of Parliament was enough to demonstrate that there are plenty of people who listen and wish to help make a difference. NGOs are a felt presence in the political sphere and their importance seems to be rising – which was a happy conclusion to come to in the end.
I had some inspirational experiences too, particularly being involved in a book-launch for The Unfinished Revolution.
Edited by Minky Worden, the Director of Global Policy Initiatives for Human Rights Watch, the book is a collection of essays celebrating progress that has been made but anticipating challenges ahead for the global fight for women’s rights.
The speeches made at the reception were incredibly moving. One spoke of a young girl in the DRC who had been kidnapped and held as a sex slave for months, after which she made it home but was promptly exiled by her family because she had become pregnant by rape. She called her baby ‘Luck’ because she felt lucky to have survived and for her child to have survived.
Mary Robinson – a woman you are obviously very familiar with – made the keynote address. She spoke of the problems still faced by women all over the world. She said that the one woman on the board of directors or in the cabinet doesn’t want to be the person talking about gender all the time, so still issues are not being talked about.
Towards the end she said, ‘I could go on about this all day’ and I honestly could have listened to her all day, and then some more. So many women at the top refuse to associate with feminism, but here was one – who went to the same university as me! – articulating so passionately issues that I care so deeply about.
She finished by saying, ‘We’re getting impatient; we want this revolution to be finished!’
Hopefully, with time, all the revolutions will be finished there will be no need for an organisation such as Human Rights Watch. It is, as such, one whose ultimate aim is its own redundancy. This summer I greatly enjoyed helping those who are trying make that happen.
