2014
Anita Barooni
J.D. student (1L), School of Law, UC Davis
Foundation Against the Violation of Law (Yerevan, Armenia)
Anita assisted in the preparation of the organization’s 2014 Human Rights Status report. Her research focused on access to justice in four key areas: labor rights, property rights, women’s rights, and prison torture, inform FAVL’s future litigation, legislative advocacy, and community education.
Sumit Baudh
Doctoral student, Juridical Science (S.J.D.) program, School of Law, UCLA
Indian Institute of Dalit Studies (New Delhi, India)
Sumit prepared a working paper and policy brief on “Law at the intersection of Dalit castes and queer sexualities.” In exploring legal responses to casteist, homophobic, and transphobic violence, this project will bring to fore new areas of intersectional discrimination that have been largely ignored in India.
Cassandra Blazer
Dr.P.H. student, School of Public Health, UC Berkeley
Mozambican Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (Mozambique)
Cassandra conducted 50 in-depth interviews with post-partum women and their community-based family planning providers in two rural districts of northern Mozambique. The long-term goal of Cassandra’s research is to develop a sustainable family planning distribution system that responds to low-resource, rural women’s needs and preferences without further burdening skilled health professionals.
Jessica Caplin
J.D. student (1L), School of Law, UC Berkeley
UN High Commissioner for Refugees (Serbia)
Jessica worked with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Representation in Serbia, where she will meet with refugees, internally displaced persons, and asylum seekers as part of an effort to prepare a report on the issue of asylum seekers originating from Serbia whose claims have been rejected by EU countries.
Maggie Crosby
Master’s student, School of Public Health, UC Berkeley
Pader Girls Academy (northern Uganda)
Maggie worked at Pader Girls Academy (PGA), a boarding school in northern Uganda that serves women and girls who have escaped the Lord’s Resistance Army. Maggie was responsible for developing the first ever sexual and reproductive health curriculum for the school.
Emma Dobbins
M.S./M.D. student, Joint Medical Program, UC Berkeley/UC San Francisco
San Francisco Department of Public Health—Direct Access to Housing program (DAH) (San Francisco, CA)
DAH subscribes to a “housing first” philosophy to homeless healthcare, recognizing that housing is a fundamental human right and a crucial component of healing. Emma worked on a mixed-methods research project that will attempt to identify and support these vulnerable individuals as they transition into housing after living outdoors.
Nick Dubroff
J.D. student (2L), School of Law, UC Berkeley
Earthjustice International (San Francisco, CA)
Nick worked on environmental litigation and research on the legal protections accorded to environmental defenders in the Americas—those who advocate for community land rights and environmental protection. Nick delivered his findings to the Asociación Interamericana para la Defensa del Ambiente, a regional NGO dedicated to defending human rights and the environment in the Western Hemisphere.
Mayra Feddersen
Ph.D. student, Jurisprudence and Social Policy program, School of Law, UC Berkeley
Ciudadano Global (Chile)
Mayra explored how immigrants in Chile come to understand their citizenship through Ciudadano Global, an immigrant rights organization whose purpose is to facilitate immigrants’ integration into Chilean society. By observing Ciudadano Global’s daily activities, she observed how the organization helps to integrate immigrants into Chilean life and experience of immigrants who participate in the organization.
Benjamin Garcia Candelaria
M.A. student, Social Documentation program, UC Santa Cruz
Grassroots Leadership (Texas)
Benjamin will be shooting his thesis film The Black Collar Worker as part of his M.A. in Social Documentation from UC Santa Cruz. The Black Collar Worker explores the cost-cutting tactics of the multi-billion dollar private prison industry. He will document the everyday struggles of a current inmate in a maximum-security private facility and how his stay and his labor are contributing to the massive profits of a for-profit prison corporation. Benjamin will be working with Texas-based non-profit Grassroots Leadership to provide support to inmates and create an inclusive narrative for victims caught in a profit-driven system.
Sonal Goyal
Master’s student, School of Public Health, UC Berkeley
Human Rights Center, UC Berkeley School of Law (Berkeley, CA)
Sonal will be working with the Human Rights Center’s Sexual Violence Program on research on sexual violence accountability programs in Eastern DRC as well as research and operational support targeting sexual violence among migrant workers in the United States. She will also be involved in cross-disciplinary research on other forms of sexual violence such as forced marriage and trafficking and will be working out of the Human Rights Center.
Georgia Hartman
Ph.D. student, Department of Anthropology, UC Irvine
Observatorio Urbano Local de Cancún (Cancún, Mexico)
Forty years after its design as Mexico’s first centrally planned tourist city, Cancún is regarded as an economic success and a planning disaster. Through partnership with the Observatorio Urbano Local de Cancún, Georgia’s research will examine the interaction between state institutions and residents in order to understand the role of the state in producing informal zones and the unhealthy and unsafe conditions found within them.
Tessa Napoles
M.S. student, Global Health Sciences program, UC San Francisco
San Francisco Women’s Cancer Network (San Francisco, CA)
Tessa has partnered with the San Francisco Women’s Cancer Network to explore the two-tiered structure of Medi-Cal’s Breast and Cervical Cancer Treatment Program, which provides different levels of health care to California women based on their citizenship and immigration status. Using qualitative methods, she will document healthcare provider understandings of and experiences with time-limited breast cancer treatment for undocumented women at San Francisco General and Highland hospitals.
Patricia C. Rodda
Ph.D. student, Department of Political Science, UC Irvine
Williams Institute, UCLA School of Law (Los Angeles, CA)
Patricia will join the Williams Institute’s Public Policy Project at UCLA, where she will compile national and international public opinion data on issues related to sexual orientation and gender identity. Patricia will gather and analyze data from international sources with the aim of producing a report providing descriptive analysis of the current state of global public opinion regarding sexual orientation and gender identity as well as how these opinions have changed over time and by location.
Katya Rodriguez
M.P.P. student, Goldman School of Public Policy, UC Berkeley
Clínica Monseñor Oscar A. Romero (Los Angeles, CA, and El Salvador)
Katya will work with Clinica Romero to further understand the barriers faced by undocumented communities when accessing health services, as well as assist in advocating and evaluating current bills seeking to promote this agenda. She will also travel to El Salvador to support Clinica Romero’s efforts to address the inequalities in health access for Salvadoran citizens.
Roxanne Strohmeier
J.D. student (1L), School of Law, UC Davis
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)—Reproductive Freedom Project (New York)
Through litigation, advocacy, and public education, the Reproductive Freedom Project strives to ensure access to abortion services, comprehensive sex education, affordable contraception, and to protect the rights of marginalized women to continue their pregnancies. Roxanne will be assisting in all aspects of litigation, including: conducting legal and policy research; drafting memoranda, affidavits and briefs; researching prospects for new litigation; and supporting research and drafting of materials for public education.
Julia Tierney
Ph.D. student, College of Environmental Design Department of City and Regional Planning, UC Berkeley
Visualizing Impact (Beirut, Lebanon)
Julia will partner with Visualizing Impact, a Beirut-based organization that brings together research and design focused on Palestine, the Middle East, and beyond to produce visualizations in the name of social justice. As a summer research fellow, Julia will work on visualizations related to the renewal of the Israeli Citizenship Law, the plight of the Syrian refugees in Lebanon and the translation of the right to the city to the Lebanese context where insecurity is further segregating Beirut along sectarian lines.
Salvador Zarate
Ph.D. student, Department of Ethnic Studies, UC San Diego
Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (Los Angeles, CA)
Salvador will be working with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles on human rights issues facing domestic and landscape laborers across Southern California. He will be helping to implement and evaluate the recently passed Domestic Bill of Rights (AB 241) for undocumented and informal laborers.
2013
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Imron Bhatti
J.D. student (2L), School of Law, UC Davis
Accountability Counsel (India)
Imron will work with San Francisco-based non-profit Accountability Counsel, supporting their case work and policy advocacy in India. This project will focus on assisting Indian communities suffering human rights and environmental abuses stemming from internationally financed agribusiness, infrastructure, and resource extraction projects. Imron will build community capacity to effectively access accountability tools while supporting policy advocacy to ensure that these means of pursuing justice are accessible, transparent, and fair.
Susan Fang
M.S./M.D. student, Joint Medical Program, UC Berkeley/UC San Francisco
Chinese Progressive Association (San Francisco, CA)
Access to high quality, affordable health care is a basic human right. With the passage of the Affordable Care Act, this nation is one step closer to making this idea a reality. However, health care inequities still persist, particularly those facing working class, communities of color, which is precisely why community organizing at the grassroots level is critical to pushing for health and social justice. This is particularly salient in San Francisco, which has a sizable population of low-income immigrants who still experience immense challenges accessing health care. As such, Susan will be working with the Chinese Progressive Association, an organization that mobilizes low-income Chinese immigrants, as a Community Health Policy Research Fellow to assist in developing a community organizing campaign in light of the implementation of ACA to ensure more equitable access to health care in San Francisco.
Steve Fisher
Master’s student, Graduate School of Journalism, UC Berkeley
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) (Arizona)
Steve will investigate Operation Streamline, a program that requires migrants detained along the southern border to be processed as criminals. Individuals are then sentenced to anywhere from 30 to 70 days in a privately owned migrant detention center before being deported. The epicenter of Streamline is in Tucson, Arizona, where every weekday up to 70 migrants go from innocent to guilty in the space of an hour. The program is partially responsible for Latinos making up half of all people sentenced to federal prisons for felonies. Read Steve’s pieces in ABC News: “A Rapid Justice Program for Immigrants Means Profits for Prisons” (July 29, 2013), and “Immigrants Get Assembly-Line Justice in Federal Court” (July 14, 2013).
Tara Gonzalez
M.S./M.D. student, Joint Medical Program, UC Berkeley/UC San Francisco
Child and Adolescent Gender Center (San Francisco, CA)
Tara will work with the Child and Adolescent Gender Center. This center is a collaboration between UCSF and community organizations, offering comprehensive medical and psychological care, as well as advocacy and legal support, to gender non-conforming/transgender youth and adolescents. Her qualitative research will explore how parents and families are negotiating medical and social decisions surrounding their children’s gender.
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Karina Hermawan
Ph.D. student, Department of Economics, UC Irvine
California Bikes Uganda (Uganda)
Karina will work with California Bikes Uganda (CAB), a non-profit organization in Fort Portal, Uganda, that locally manufactures and gives bicycles to orphans and HIV-positive youths. Those who receive bicycles often live 8 to 20 kilometers from schools and health centers. The organization also builds and customizes hand-powered tricycles for disabled adults and children living in the community. Karina will be responsible for designing a survey to measure the impacts of the program, carrying out data collection via visits and conversation with program participants or recipients, and evaluating means to better serve them.
Leah Jacobs
Ph.D. candidate, School of Social Welfare, UC Berkeley
Citywide Forensic Case Management (San Francisco, CA)
Leah will be conducting a community-based research project, “From Cell Blocks to City Blocks: Experiences of Correctional Involvement Among Individuals with Mental Illness.” The study is being developed in collaboration with Citywide Forensic Case Management, the largest provider of services to system-involved individuals with mental illness in San Francisco. The aim of the qualitative study is to forefront the voices of this dually stigmatized population by capturing their experiences of the correctional system and community re-entry services, in addition to their perceptions of the barriers and facilitators to successful community re-entry.
Elizabeth Jimenez
J.D. student (2L), School of Law, UC Berkeley
European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (Berlin, Germany)
Elizabeth will work with the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), a non-profit legal and educational organization based in Berlin. At ECCHR, Elizabeth will contribute to the Business and Human Rights Program, conducting legal research, analysis, and case work on projects involving human rights violations committed by transnational corporations.
Eli Marienthal
Ph.D. student, Department of Geography, UC Berkeley
Défenseurs des Opprimés (Haiti)
In partnership with two local human rights organizations, Eli will examine the dynamics driving development of Haiti’s most rapidly expanding post-earthquake urban formation. Located 10 miles outside of Port-au-Prince, the suburb of Canaan is often invoked as the next Cité Soleil, a reference to the city’s most notorious slum, and a metonym for unmanageable urban poverty and violence. Eli’s collaborative work with DOP (Défenseurs des Opprimés/Defenders of the Oppressed) and FRAKKA (Fos Refleksyon ak Aksyon Sou Koze Kay/Force for Reflection and Action on Housing) will examine how this new city, has come into being not outside of official relief efforts, but in relation to them, despite its formal exclusion from the project of reconstruction. The surveys, reports, and maps generated this summer and next fall will become resources for these partner organizations as they struggle to defend people from violent eviction and organize to make claims for basic service provisions to Canaan.
Anita Mukherji
J.D. student (2L), School of Law, UC Davis
East Bay Sanctuary Covenant (Berkeley, CA)
As an intern at the East Bay Sanctuary Covenant (EBSC) in Berkeley, Anita will participate in all stages of representation for affirmative asylum applicants, culminating in representing them at the San Francisco Asylum Office. Her caseload will include a diverse range of clients from around the world who are fleeing persecution on the basis of race, religion, nationality, gender, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. EBSC addresses urgent human rights issues by providing pro-bono representation to low-income and indigent immigrants and refugees so that they are not placed in removal proceedings and are provided a pathway to citizenship.
Genevieve Painter
Ph.D. candidate, Jurisprudence and Social Policy program, School of Law, UC Berkeley
Center for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism (Canada)
Genevieve Painter will study the human rights issues raised by Canada’s Indian Residential Schools system and the impact of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. She will explore the application of international human rights laws to the violations committed in Indian Residential Schools and seek to understand how human rights principles influence the TRC’s work.
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Rebecca Peters
Undergraduate, Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, UC Berkeley
Fundación Cantaro Azul (Bolivia)
International policy discourses on human rights now routinely address gender disparities in both education and health. Yet despite these advances, the conversation often overlooks a significant site of inequity that brings together issues of gender, rights, education and health: the hygienic management of menstruation (MHM). Rebecca’s fellowship work will investigate how MHM can be appropriately incorporated into girl’s educational and physical environments in Cochabamba, Bolivia. By fostering community discussion, education, and participation in MHM activities, she hopes to contribute to structural change on the community’s terms, while broadening an understanding of the interplay among water, sanitation, gender equity, and human rights.
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Nolan Phillips + Jayson Hunt
Ph.D. candidates, Department of Sociology, UC Irvine
Coalition of People’s World Cup and Olympic Games Committees (Brazil)
Jayson Hunt and Nolan Phillips will be interviewing and collecting information from members of the National Coalition of People’s World Cup and Olympic Games Committees in Brazil. Organizations from the 12 cities hosting World Cup games during the summer of 2014 comprise the National Coalition. They will investigate the formation, tactics, and success of the coalition and the relationship to human rights.
Ruyan Rahnama
M.S. student, Global Health Sciences program, UC San Francisco
Libertas Center for Human Rights (New York)
The Libertas Center for Human Rights at Elmhurst Hospital in New York provides torture survivors seeking asylum with comprehensive access to healthcare, social services, and medical affidavits. Ruyan will undergo a retrospective review of intake forms and patient charts to identify potential areas of improvement in patient intake and follow-up care. Medical documents carry great weight in asylum cases so an improvement in services can positively impact patients’ lives.
Davorn Sisavath
Ph.D. candidate, Department of Ethnic Studies, UC San Diego
Legacies of War (Washington, DC, and Laos)
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the end of the U.S. bombing campaign in Laos (1964-1973); however the country continues to battle with the legacy of the “secret war” where unexploded ordnance (“UXO”) remain hidden and pose a constant threat for many Laotians. In collaboration with the missions and goals of Legacies of War based in Washington, DC, that has done considerable work in advocating for U.S. support for clearance of UXO in Laos, Davorn will be examining and analyzing the organization’s current and historical documents to inform, update and assist with advocacy campaigns and education to raise awareness, and to conduct interviews with specialists who have done extensive work and/or are knowledgeable about the efficacy of the current UXO programs in Laos.
Ioana Tchoukleva
J.D. student (2L), School of Law, UC Berkeley
UN High Commissioner for Refugees (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)
Ioana will be working with the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Malaysia. She will be handling cases of unaccompanied and separated refugee children, making decisions on whether they should stay with their current caregivers, be referred to foster homes, or altogether resettled in a third country. She plans to serve as an advocate for refugee children, whose only access to protection and services in Malaysia lies with UNHCR.
Ricardo Velasco Trujillo
M.A. student, Social Documentation program, UC Santa Cruz
Documentary: “After the Crossfire: Memories of Violence and Displacement in Colombia’s Northern Pacific Coast” (Colombia)
Ricardo will be working on the documentary “After the Crossfire: Memories of Violence and Displacement in Colombia’s Northern Pacific Coast,” a film about the effects of war on the civil unarmed population of Juradó, a remote coastal town in an isolated and marginalized jungle region in the Colombian state of Chocó. The film analyzes the emergence and escalation of the armed conflict in the region during the decade of 1990, bringing into public light a series of severe violations against human rights committed by armed groups disputing territorial control of the zone. Relying primarily on testimonies of witnesses, the documentary opens fundamental questions about the realities of the armed conflict, the effects of trauma and forced displacement within different social and ethnic groups living in the area, and the complex ethical and moral demands of the victims when impunity and oblivion prevail over justice and truth.
2012
Hannah Birnbaum
Ph.D. student, College of Environmental Design Department of City and Regional Planning, UC Berkeley
Re-Imagining Detroit: Participatory Planning in a Shrinking City
Detroit Collaborative Design Center (Detroit, MI)
Hannah Birnbaum will work with the Detroit Collaborative Design Center on implementing the community engagement component of the Detroit Works Project Long-Term Planning effort. This city-sponsored participatory planning initiative will help address the pressing social and spatial challenges Detroit is facing by marrying community and technical expertise, and promote increased sustainability and quality of life. Hannah will assist in structuring and facilitating grassroots involvement in the planning effort, and in producing a strategic framework based on the outcomes of the process to guide future planning and decision-making.
Shane Collins
M.S. student, Global Health Sciences program, UC San Francisco
Human Right Center Safe Shelters Project
Human Rights Center, UC Berkeley School of Law—Sexual Violence and Accountability Project (Berkeley, CA)
I will work with the Sexual Violence and Accountability Project at the UC Berkeley Human Rights Center to study traditional and alternative models of “safe shelters” that serve individuals fleeing sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) in forced displacement contexts. This four-country qualitative study will assess safe shelters in Kenya, Haiti, Colombia, and along the Thai-Burma border, with the goal of synthesizing knowledge to guide and improve the provision of protection for survivors of SGBV. Our findings will be disseminated in country-specific assessment reports and an overall comparative assessment, which will include formal recommendations for the UN High Commission for Refugees.
Monica Crooms
J.D. student (2L), School of Law, UC Davis
Victims in Hiding: Identifying Immigration Challenges for Victims of Torture and Human Trafficking, Eligible for Relief
Legal Aid Foundation (Los Angeles, CA)
In summer 2012, I will work on the Battered Immigrant Women’s Project and the Torture Survivors Project at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles. Both projects offer the opportunity to provide direct assistance to Southern California’s community of refugees, asylees, trafficking victims and victims of domestic abuse, through outreach, and applying for legal resettlement in the United States. The difficulty with this work, is actual identification of victims eligible for relief. In addition to planning and coordinating targeted outreach events to identify victims, I will work to provide legal immigration benefits and deportation defense in federal immigration court.
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Catalina Hernandez
Undergraduate, Literatures and Cultures program, UC Merced
Deviant Mamas: Understanding How and Why Women Make Empowered, Informed Choices for Healthier, Safer Outcomes in Maternal/Infant Care
Choices in Childbirth (Bay Area, CA)
Increased use of interventions (especially C-sections) in U.S. maternity care has resulted in high morbidity and mortality rates. In a birth culture filled with misinformation and misconceptions about obstetric care’s safety, women must be empowered to search for healthier alternatives for themselves and their babies. Despite the safety of midwifery-based care (and its improved results throughout the world), women remain ignorant to their options for non-obstetric care impeding their ability to make informed, safe birth choices. Understanding why and how women move away from the mainstream and make empowered choices could inspire initiatives that improve the current birth culture.
Hannah Labaree
J.D. student (2L), School of Law, UC Davis
Litigation, Education and Reform: Towards a Greater Compassion in Criminal Justice
Equal Justice Initiative (Montgomery, AL)
In partnership with Equal Justice Initiative, this project will focus on providing post- conviction legal representation to people denied fair treatment under the law, in capital and non-capital cases. With no statewide public defender system, Alabama’s indigent defendants experience a multitude of injustices, many centered around racial bias. Through the appeals process, EJI uses litigation as a means to restore a balance to the criminal justice system in Alabama and elsewhere in the Deep South, and community education to foster understanding and compassion about the nature of that system.
Nicole Lindahl
Ph.D. candidate, Jurisprudence and Social Policy program, School of Law, UC Berkeley
Intimacy, Manipulation, and the Maintenance of Social Boundaries in California’s Warehouse Prisons
Project Rebound, San Francisco State University (Oakland, CA)
Today, the U.S. incarcerates more people per capita than any other country in the world, and for young minority men incarceration is a routine experience. Yet we know little about the qualitative experience of incarceration in an era when overcrowded housing units, lengthy prison sentences, and racial segregation have become normalized conditions of confinement. This project explores life inside California’s contemporary warehouse prisons by focusing on the emotional labor involved in working and living behind the walls. In examining how structural features of the warehouse prison facilitate particular emotional experiences while repressing others, I hope to expose less visible but primary harms of prison life.
Leonora Paula
Ph.D. candidate, Department of Literature, UC San Diego
Urban Housing Rights in Brazil: More Than Just “A Roof and Four Walls”
União dos Movimentos de Moradia de São Paulo (São Paulo, Brazil)
The Union of Housing Movements in São Paulo (UMMSP) is one of the most important grassroots organizations demanding the recognition of the human right to adequate housing in Brazil. Leonora will conduct participatory fieldwork with the UMMSP, assisting with the organization of advocacy opportunities and the development of programs for the movement. Working with the UMMSP will afford great insight into understanding how the grassroots organization most responsible for shaping the way the newly articulated “rights to the city” are being interpreted in São Paulo is exposing the limits of the global city discourse.
Manuel Rosaldo
Ph.D. candidate, Department of Sociology, UC Berkeley
The Power of “Powerless” Workers: Colombian Waste Pickers’ Struggle for Social and Economic Inclusion
Enda (Colombia)
Traditional labor unions view informal sector workers as “unorganizable” due to their lack of legal protections and the fact that many are self-employed. Nonetheless, in recent decades, street vendors, domestic workers, home-based producers, and waste pickers have begun organizing to make their voices heard to governments, employers, and transnational organizations. How do informal workers in hostile social, economic, and political contexts attain and wield power? To explore this question, I investigate Colombia’s largest and most established waste picker’s organization, the Association of Recyclers of Bogota (ARB), and its unprecedented victory in winning inclusion in Bogota’s 2012 waste management tendering process.
Gabe Schwartzman
Undergradaute, Department of Geography, UC Berkeley
Ideologies of Mountaintop Removal and the Appalachian Pro-Coal Movement
Blair Community Center and Museum (Blair, WV)
Coal mining and especially mountaintop removal have been shown to pose environmental health risks for workers and residents near mining operations. Despite knowledge of these studies, there is a large grassroots movement that stands against environmental and labor regulation in the Appalachian coalfields. Based in southwestern West Virginia, I am investigating what ideologies drive these peoples political position.
Habiba Simjee
J.D. student (1L), School of Law, UC Berkeley
Youth in Immigration Policy: Ensuring the Safety of Unaccompanied Children
Casa Cornelia Law Center (San Diego, CA)
More than 10,000 children are apprehended by the Border Patrol each year crossing the U.S.-Mexico border without a parent or guardian. They often leave their country of origin because of abuse or violence, abandonment, natural disasters, war, poverty, or to reunite with their families. Because unaccompanied children travel without a guardian over long distances, their fear of apprehension and detention makes them more susceptible to exploitation. Habiba will be working with the Children’s Program at Casa Cornelia Law Center to provide legal aid and support for unaccompanied children apprehended by Border Patrol.
Samantha Stevens
M.A. student, Social Documentation program, UC Santa Cruz
Whose Serengeti?
Earthworks (Kenya and Tanzania)
Whose Serengeti? is a 30-minute documentary that seeks to deconstruct the controversy surrounding a proposed Serengeti Highway. In addition to presenting perspectives from various stakeholders, this film will also look at the connection between this road and the trade of Congolese conflict metals used in electronics. With mounting pressure from the international community in light of severe human right abuses associated with the mining of these metals, this film will attempt to go beyond the recent Serengeti Highway headlines to critically examine post-colonial conservation, development rhetoric, human rights, and the impacts of globalization as they intersect on this iconic landscape.
Aidan Tait + Divya Vohra
M.S./M.D. student, Joint Medical Program, UC Berkeley/UC San Francisco, and Dr.P.H. student, School of Public Health, UC Berkeley (respectively)
Exploring Pregnancy Intentions and Need for Contraception Among Women in Luanda Province, Angola
Development Workshop (Angola)
Access to family planning services is critical to improving women’s health and promoting empowerment. However, existing methods used to assess women’s family planning needs fail to fully capture the complexity of their decision-making process around childbearing and contraceptive use. This is especially important in Angola; just 6% of women use contraception, but most want to limit or space their pregnancies. Together with Development Workshop, Angola’s oldest NGO, Aidan and Divya will interview local women and health care providers to understand why women who want to limit pregnancies are not using contraception, and how family planning programs can better serve them.
Olga Tomchin
J.D. student (2L), School of Law, UC Berkeley
Protecting the Human Rights of Queer and Trans* Immigrants
National Center for Lesbian Rights (San Francisco, CA)
Queer and trans* immigrants face high levels of oppression and marginalization both in the U.S. and in their home countries. I will spend the summer addressing their human rights needs through providing direct services to refugees fleeing persecution and immigrants who have survived violent crime in the U.S., educating the legal community on queer and trans* immigration issues, and working on impact litigation such as the fight against the Defense of Marriage Act. Additionally, I will assist in cases where queer and trans* immigrants face other forms of discrimination, such as in housing and employment.
Leah Zani
Ph.D. student, Department of Anthropology, UC Irvine
Animating Bodies: Transforming Bodies in the Land of a Million Bombs
Mines Advisory Group (Laos)
In Laos, sometimes called the Land of a Million Bombs, the rehabilitation of the nation is linked to the socialized rehabilitation of maimed persons and the efforts to clear land. Researching the connections between personal loss and collective social loss, this project will examine how the Mines Advisory Group (MAG) is part of an embodied politics of personal loss of limb and collective loss of land and bodies in the Laos.
Anonymous
UC Berkeley
Documenting Human Rights Abuses in the Mexican Drug War
Ciudadanos en Apoyo de los Derechos Humanos (Mexico)
Now five years since President Felipe Calderon gave carte blanche to Mexican security forces in their war against the drug cartels, the results have been extrajudicial killings, disappearances, torture, forced confessions and prison abuses. Equally troubling, the offensive has come at the expense of building an institutional framework for the respect of human rights through meaningful judicial investigations, credible criminal trials and procedural safeguards. My project will work to document abuses while developing a structural understanding of the challenges of reform.
Anonymous
UC Berkeley
Smallholders, Speculation and “Sustainable Soy”: Paraguay and the Global Land Grab
Anonymous Organization (Paraguay)
A global land grab is reshaping rural landscapes and the livelihood potential of millions. In Paraguay, land grabs for soy cultivation are contentious and bring to the fore competing views about how land should be used to create value. One multinational is pioneering a new model of “sustainable soy” which aims to reconcile profitability with social goals like sustainability and development. But civic groups argue that human rights violations are inherent in farming based on capital- intensive, GMO monocultures. This project analyzes the land politics that mediate conflicts between multinationals and smallholders when both articulate a commitment to the social function of land.
2011
Hekia Bodwitch
Ph.D. candidate, Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, UC Berkeley
Re-distributing Resources, Re-shaping State Power: Settlement of Maori Claims in New Zealand
Stout Research Center, Victoria University (New Zealand)
Through the Treaty of Waitangi settlement process, New Zealand’s Maori are illuminating state injustices and laying claim to territory and identity-based rights. The bureaucratic apparatus that forms New Zealand’s treaty settlement process is heralded internationally by the United Nations and indigenous rights activists as an exemplar of efforts to address historical and present-day grievances of indigenous peoples. However, the extent to which the process actually challenges hegemonic power relations built upon histories of oppression remains unclear. Examining outcomes of settlement claims, Hekia will work to examine both the extent to which this settlement process actually curbs Maori disadvantage and how it might work as a model for indigenous peoples working to achieve rights elsewhere.
Joanna Cuevas Ingram
J.D. student (2L), School of Law, UC Davis
Litigating Accountability: Human Rights Law in U.S. and International Forums
Center for Constitutional Rights (New York)
Partnering with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), this project analyzes how CCR’s litigation, education, and outreach strategies work together to enforce international and domestic rights protections—while maintaining accountability to diverse clients and community-based human rights movements. Legal work will be conducted in several of the following areas: international investigations into war crimes and acts of torture; global efforts to close the Guantánamo detention center; litigation in domestic courts to hold corporations accountable for international wrongs under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS); and investigations into racial profiling practices in immigration and national security policies and programs.
Kelsey Ellis
Undergraduate, Department of Structural Engineering, Jacobs School of Engineering, UC San Diego
20,000 Children: Literacy in Ghana
Ghana Africa International Operations (GAIO) (Akwatia, Ghana)
This summer Kelsey will be traveling to Akwatia, Ghana to work with GAIO (Ghana Africa International Operations) where she will be conducting land and technological surveys to provide data for the library being built. The library is being built for the children of Akwatia and the community to promote literacy, it will be stocked with computers, books, art supplies, and will have running water. Kelsey will be assessing the needs of the community, so that everything implemented into the library will be used to its full capacity.
Aimee V. Garza
Ph.D. candidate, Department of Anthropology, UC Santa Cruz
What is a Sanctuary City? Local Law Enforcement Practices and Immigrant Rights in New Mexico
Somos Un Pueblo Unido (Santa Fe, NM)
The “sanctuary city” is a primary subject of contention in debates about illegal immigration and the place of Mexican migrants in the United States. While some cities have responded with overtly discriminatory legislative assaults on undocumented migrants, other locales have acted to protect and integrate them. In partnership with Somos Un Pueblo Unido, an immigrant rights organization based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, this project focuses on policy inciatives intended to limit collaboration between local law enforcement and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) and improving policing practices. My research evaluates the implementation of the “prohibition of profiling practices act,” a law that Somos Un Pueblo Unido drafted and helped pass in 2009, that aims to eliminate biased policing. The goal this study is to examine how individual agencies have responded to the law and rate their compliance in order to hold them accountable to the communities that they are charged to protect and serve. The relationship between local police and immigrant communities is vital to protecting the human rights of undocumented migrants and also promoting the public safety of all residents. Read her report on policing here.
Rachel Jamison
J.D./M.A. student, International and Area Studies program and School of Law, UC Berkeley
Gender and Access to Justice: Building a Community-Based Justice System in a Post-War Society
Timap for Justice (Sierra Leone)
I will be working in Freetown, Sierra Leone with Timap for Justice. Timap works to train paralegals on international human rights norms and legal principles. I will be training paralegals on human rights norms related to cases of violence against women. I will also be working on an impact litigation projects for particularly egregious cases which cannot be handled by community based justice mechanisms.
Jihan Kahssay
J.D. student (2L), School of Law, UC Davis
Refugee Resettlement in the Horn of Africa
UN High Commissioner for Refugees (Ethiopia)
As a refugee resettlement intern, I will work with the Addis Ababa resettlement unit to advance individual urban refugee cases for resettlement to third countries. I will work closely with refugees, especially those from Eritrea, to assist in the management of their resettlement cases by conducting interviews, providing counseling, researching country conditions in support of their applications for resettlement, and following-up with UNHCR’s partner organizations, including International Organization for Migration, Overseas Processing Entity, resettlement country authorities and others.
Matt Lane
Ph.D. candidate, Department of Anthropology, UC Irvine
Ragpickers: Female Stewards in Waste Politics, Environmental Care, and Green Futures
Stree Mukti Sanghatana (Mumbai, India)
My internship will take place in Mumbai, India, where I focus on the development of infrastructure and technology to accommodate the handling of waste and to develop new business models and knowledge of materialities (specifically scrap metal and e-waste) for a women’s rights collective that mediates the business relations of 1,600 female ragpickers and invests their income into “green” commodity energy futures.
Cristina López
Undergraduate, Department of Political Science, UC Berkeley
Support, Reintegration, and Voice for Survivors of Human Trafficking in Sacramento
Opening Doors, Inc. (Sacramento, CA)
Cristina will work with Opening Doors, Inc., to create a record which identifies patterns of human trafficking at migrant camps in Sacramento with the ultimate goal of developing more accessible networks of support, rehabilitation, and reintegration for victims of human trafficking. The outcome will be a record of testimonies from victims of trafficking and community members of migrant camps who see the repercussions of trafficking in their community. Cristina will document the stories of survivors of human trafficking in migrant camps with the goal of helping reduce the frequency of such practices and violations in the greater Sacramento area.
Darren Modzelewski
Ph.D. candidate/J.D. student, Department of Anthropology and School of Law, UC Berkeley
Safe Women, Strong Nations
American Indian Resource Center (Helena, MT)
Native American women suffer from violence at a rate two-and-a-half times greater than that of any other population in the United States. One in three will be raped; four in five will be victims of violent assault, and 88% of offenders are non-Native. Until the Tribal Law and Order Act in 2010 (TOLA), limited enforcement authority by tribal governments and police helped perpetuate this violence. Tribes are ready to implement the Act, but the question of ability remains. My research addresses this issue and provides recommendations for increasing tribal capacity to exercise their new criminal jurisdictional capabilities under TOLA.
Dana Moss
Ph.D. student, Department of Sociology, UC Irvine
Models of Activism and Human Rights Talk in the New Middle East
New Jordan Research Center (Jordan)
Dana will volunteer for the Al-Urdun Al-Jadeed (The New Jordan) Research Center in Amman, Jordan. The UJRC has been a leading institution in the promotion of civil society development, political dialogue and democracy in Jordan for 30 years, but is now looking to shift its activities to include young activists, new social movement organizations, and social media. Dana will be initiating the center’s new mission and strategies, and will be conducting fieldwork on how human rights organizations talk about and work for rights reform in authoritarian states.
Lis Powelson
M.S./M.D. student, Joint Medical Program, UC Berkeley/UC San Francisco
Implementation of a Syringe Exchange Program and Condom Distribution in a Malaysia Prison
Center of Excellence for Research in AIDS, University of Malaya (Malaysia)
Of the population of people in Malaysia living with HIV/AIDS, 76.3% are intravenous drug users. The prevalence rate of HIV infection in Malaysian prisons is approximately 6%. This project is an exploration of the steps necessary for implementation of a syringe exchange program and condom distribution in a Malaysian prison. Through interviews and focus groups with prisoners, prison guards and government officials a plan for implementation of these services will be created and implemented. This project aims to reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS through the prison by providing better resources for prevention.
Marissa Ram
J.D. student (1L), School of Law, UC Berkeley
Exposing the Hidden Consequences of Australia’s Restrictive Immigration Policies on Forced Migrants
New South Wales Council for Civil Liberties (Australia)
Marissa will collaborate with the New South Wales Council for Civil Liberties, an Australian NGO with special UN consultative status, to provide legal representation to refugee clients subjected to Australia’s notorious “mandatory detention” policy. By applying her research on human rights abuses in privatized detention centers to NSWCCL’s legislative recommendations and public policy campaigns, she will endeavor to reframe the current discourse to better invoke public sympathy for refugees. Additionally, Marissa will formulate policy recommendations in order to increase public awareness of labor and sex trafficking in Australia and improve response efforts and trafficking survivor support programs.
Leah Rorvig
M.S./M.D. student, Joint Medical Program, UC Berkeley/UC San Francisco
Mistreatment of Transgender Women in the Health Care Setting
Tom Waddell Health Center (San Francisco, CA)
In the U.S., transgender women endure pervasive discrimination and harassment. This community also currently faces a serious health crisis, including high rates of HIV/AIDS, substance abuse, and depression. Alarmingly, significant evidence indicates that mistreatment and harassment are occurring even in the health care setting, but minimal research has documented the nature, extent, and impact of these experiences. Working with Tom Waddell Health Center, the nation’s first publicly funded provider of transgender health care, Leah will interview transgender women to learn about their negative experiences in the health care setting.
Joanna Sokolowski
M.A. student, Social Documentation program, UC Santa Cruz
DISLOCATION
California Coalition of Women Prisoners (Bay Area, CA)
Joanna is producing a documentary film which will investigate prison injustice and human rights violations, as well as the profound effects of inequality, invisibility and incarceration on the life course. The film is in collaboration with California Coalition for Women Prisoners, and examines the cyclical pathways to prison, as well as the inherent entrapment of its systems. The film will interrogate the structural and contextual nature of incarceration, examining the stigmatization, dramatic shifts in status, the familial nature of crime, as well as the complex ways individuals narrate their daily lives around systems of power.
S. Calvin Thomas
J.D. student (2L), UC Hastings College of the Law
The Marginalized Women’s Campaign for Domestic Workers’ Rights
Equal Rights Advocates (San Francisco, CA)
This year, the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, I will work as a summer law clerk for Equal Rights Advocates. This work will help domestic workers to empower themselves to speak out for their rights as laborers, including their right to be free from violence on the job, their right to work with dignity, their right to occupational health and safety, and their right to receive fair and equal pay for the work that they do. Our goal is to pass the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, currently pending before the California legislature.
Oliver Ting
Ph.D. student, Department of Literature, UC San Diego
Dancing Children in Red-light Districts: Komal Gandhar’s Performance Activism and the Embodied Knowledge of Human Rights
Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (India)
In collaboration with DMSC, a community-based organization for sex workers’ rights, I will explore how the performance activism among local youth in red-light districts challenge the stigma that renders their struggles against human rights violations invisible, and on the other hand how they creatively utilize self-representation as a critical organizing strategy to articulate their collective lived experience. Working with Komal Gandhar, a DMSC-affiliated professional dance and theater group formed by children of sex workers, I hope to expand on the scholarship of the cultural production of localized human rights knowledge for community mobilization and empowerment among youth in red-light areas.
Rosalynn Vega
Ph.D. student, Joint Program in Medical Anthropology, UC Berkeley/UC San Francisco
A Tale of Two Births: Transnational Health Care in Multiethnic Mexico
Center for the Adolescents of San Miguel de Allende (Mexico)
I am compelled to examine shifting notions of family, gender, sexuality and reproduction through the lens of transnational medical practice and new multi-ethnomedical landscapes. In addition to joining in the recent discourse on the friction between hegemonic biomedicine and a specific ethnomedical system, I wish to push the question further to examine what are the results of newly-introduced universal care coverage in Mexico, when economic decisions are divorced from medical choice. This project is concerned with social justice and equity, and the tension between the neoliberal patient (characterized by an individualistic subjectivity and freedom of choice) and new politico-medical apparatuses acting upon the body politic (emergent governmental and non-governmental structures and practices scripting how women give birth). My work critically examines Mexico’s universal health care system, the advent of safe, public childbirth as a citizenship-based right, the relationship between health-oriented NGOs and the Mexican state and transnational ways of knowing gender, health and the body.
Anonymous
M.S./M.D. student, Joint Medical Program, UC Berkeley/UC San Francisco
Political Subjectivities Among Qianxi Woman Villagers: An Ethnography of Community-Based Mental Health Counseling
Anonymous Organization (China)
A disturbing disparity exists in suicide rate in China between the general population and rural, young women. This fellow will conduct an ethnography among young, rural Chinese women who utilize counseling services and community mental health training. Her study aims to understand how community-based mental health counseling for these women with psychological difficulties, including risk of suicide, functions as a self-care project that offers routes to political subjectivities as well as unexpected risks for them.
Anonymous
J.D. student, UC Hastings College of the Law
Legal Research and Civil Society: Empowering Youth to Make Social Change in Burma
Anonymous Organization (Burma)
This fellow will be working in Mandalay, Burma, working a locally run non-profit dedicated to empowering youth to advance long term social change and human rights in Burma. His particular project will include researching gender violence, and child rights under Burmese law, as written and as practiced. He will draft reports comparing the results to international legal norms. Additionally, he will help set up a curriculum to promote child rights and prevent gender violence throughout Burma. He will work with representatives of religious, private, and civic groups to plan education campaigns to address those issues.
2010
Sandra Alvarez
Ph.D. student, Department of Politics, UC Santa Cruz
Intercultural Human Rights Dialogues and Documentation
Asociación de Autoridades Tradicionales y Cabildos U’wa (Colombia)
Since the nineties, the U’wa people of Colombia have developed regional, national and international solidarity in their struggle to defend their land from colonization and resource exploitation. This summer I will collaborate with ASOUWA and U’wa women, the U’wa Defense Project at Amazon Watch and the family members of Ingrid Washinawatok and Lahe’ena’a Gay to produce three short audio-visual research projects. My goal is to promote a space for dialogue between these different and closely related groups by creating pieces that express their perspectives and experiences working for indigenous rights with particular attention to the role of women.
Madeleine Bair
Master’s student, Graduate School of Journalism and International and Area Studies program, UC Berkeley
From Victim to Victor: The Women Speak
Jamaicans for Justice (Jamaica)
More than 2,000 Jamaicans have died in the past decade at the hands of the police. Madeleine is using multimedia storytelling to document the stories of women who have struggled for years in pursuit of justice for their family members killed in extrajudicial violence. Victims’ Voices, a documentary she co-produced with the non-profit group Jamaicans for Justice, debuted this December in Kingston. The film chronicles the struggles of three women who have fought painstakingly to get justice for their sons who were killed under suspicious circumstances by members of the security forces.
Teo Ballvé
Ph.D. student, Department of Geography, UC Berkeley
Narco, Inc.: The Drug Economy’s Violent Spaces of Fortune
Verdad Abierta (Colombia)
In partnership with Verdad Abierta (Open Truth), a local media organization, Teo will document how the illicit drug economy of Colombia’s armed conflict fuels a particularly ravenous metabolic cycle between violent dispossession, drug money, and plantation agribusiness. He will also trace how campesino organizations have devised non-violent political strategies that could be called a “radical humanitarianism” to fight against this violent ensemble of forces.
Lara Cushing
Ph.D./M.P.H. student, Energy and Resources Group and School of Public Health, UC Berkeley
Protecting Vulnerable Communities in a Warming World
Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense (Mexico City, Mexico)
Lara will work with the Asociación Interamericana para la Defensa del Ambiente, headquartered in Mexico City, to make the human rights case for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Her research will make clear the disproportionate impact of global warming on vulnerable communities in Latin America and states’ obligations to take action on climate change under existing human rights covenants. The project seeks to both assess ways in which human rights principles can sharpen climate change policy-making and identify guiding principles for preventing human rights abuse in the execution of mitigation and adaptation strategies going forward.
Cheryl Deutsch
Ph.D. student, Department of Anthropology, UC Irvine
Planning for Livelihoods: Street Vendors and Sustainable Transport in India
National Hawkers’ Federation (India)
Cheryl will work with the National Hawkers’ Federation, a national federation of street vendors’ unions in India, to explore the potential of urban planning to secure the right to livelihood of illegal street vendors. Specifically, she will carry out ethnographic studies of two newly constructed sustainable transport projects (one a Bus Rapid Transit corridor) and their efficacy in securing space for street vendors in New Delhi and Nanded, Maharashtra.
Katie Dingeman
Ph.D. student, Department of Sociology, UC Irvine
Coerced Transnationality: Deportation and the Forced Separation of
Salvadoran Families
Central American Resource Center (Los Angeles, CA)
I will work with the Central American Resource Center in Los Angeles as an intern assisting legal advocates with preparation of “U-visas” for undocumented migrant victims crime, especially domestic violence. I will also conduct semi-structured interviews with clients of the organization to study the effects of deportation on Salvadoran families left behind in the United States. Particular attention will be paid to psychosocial and economic effects on children, the transnational strategies families use to cope with the loss of a parent or spouse, and the ways in which gender is reconfigured in the wake of a deportation.
Michelle Dizon
Ph.D. candidate, Department of Rhetoric, UC Berkeley
Perpetual Peace
Focus on the Global South (Philippines)
Perpetual Peace is a feature-length video that deals with the contemporary political situation in the Philippines. It will consider the legacy of U.S. colonialism, the current U.S. re-militarization of the region, multinational corporations as they exploit the country’s resources, and the extrajudicial killings of activists in the country. It will ask how empire lives on in the era of globalization. It will ask what, if anything, is left of democracy.
Ugo Felicia Edu
Ph.D. student, Joint Program in Medical Anthropology, UC Berkeley/UC San Francisco
Perspectives on Reproductive Choice: Women’s Stories of Tubal Ligation and Other Contraceptives
A Cor da Bahia (Brazil)
Ugo will conduct collaborative archival and anthropological research with the research group, A Cor da Bahia, in Brazil to explore the diverse ways that women define, understand and engage with reproductive rights. She is also interested in exploring the contexts that construct “choice” in reproductive health decision-making and the ways that reproductive “choice” or the seeming exercise of reproductive rights may serve as negotiations of the violation of other human rights.
Patience Fielding
Ph.D. candidate, Graduate School of Education, UC Berkeley
Rights to Literacy: An Examination of Child Workers in a Developing Country
International Federation of Women Lawyers (Cameroon)
My project seeks to examine how children and adolescents view and understand their rights and access to education and literacy in a developing country. The project will focus on select child laborers in Marché Centrale, a market center in Douala, which is also the biggest city in Cameroon, West Africa. At this main market center, children are involved in various trading capacities such as hawkers, street vendors, and shop assistants. Children involved in such activities have to drop out of school and spend entire days as workers. My fieldwork will give me opportunities to explore some of issues that continue to rob women and children in developing countries of access to literacy and education
Lexa Grayner
J.D. student (1L), UC Hastings College of the Law
Empowering Migrant Communities in Thailand through Justice Education
Bridges Across Borders Southeast Asia Community Legal Education Initiative (Thailand)
Lexa will work with Bridges Across Borders Southeast Asia Community Legal Education Initiative (BABSEA CLE) to empower refugee and Burmese migrant communities in Thailand through legal education. BABSEA CLE builds capacity among local lawyers and law students to use interactive teaching methods when educating vulnerable communities. Lexa will assist in this process by creating lesson plans to be used by Thai law students when educating refugee and migrant communities about their legal rights
Candler Hallman
Ph.D. student, Department of Anthropology, UC San Diego
Granting the Victims Voice: A Case Study on the Effects of the Hillsborough Castle Agreement on Victims’ Rights Discourses
Families Acting for Innocent Relatives (Northern Ireland)
This project studies how recent political agreements in Northern Ireland affect the discourses of marginalized victims’ rights organizations in Northern Ireland. I ask the following questions: How do post-conflict societies attempt to incorporate victims’ of human rights abuses that feel marginalized by the prevailing discourses of peace and reconciliation? Will efforts to incorporate these groups marginalize other rights organizations? These are critical issues because they show whether post-conflict treaties and legislation can foster democratic dialogue, and possibly consensus, on how to commemorate the dead and prosecute the living, thereby taking steps to alleviate the deep personal wounds of civil conflict
Kony Kim
J.D./Ph.D. student, Jurisprudence and Social Policy program, School of Law, UC Berkeley
Holistic Defense Advocacy: Restorative Justice in an Urban Community
Bronx Defenders (New York)
As an intern with The Bronx Defenders, I will be trained in holistic advocacy: a restorative approach to criminal defense that seeks to break the poverty-prison cycle. I will also study how principles of restorative justice shape the organization’s advocacy and outreach methods, particularly as diverse experts collaborate to secure health, safety, civil rights and civil liberties in the South Bronx
Andrew Lim
M.S./M.D. student, Joint Medical Program, UC Berkeley/UC San Francisco
Health Programs in Eastern Burma
Global Health Access Program (Thailand)
Andrew will work in conjunction with the Global Health Access Program (GHAP) to design evaluation tools and improve implementation of health programs providing aid to victims of human rights abuses in eastern Burma. These health programs are highly adaptive to the unpredictable security situations in the rural villages and remote jungle areas that they serve
Daniel Marsh
J.D. student (1L), School of Law, UC Davis
Equal Access: Providing Free Justice Services to Individuals in Sierra Leone
Timap for Justice (Sierra Leone)
Daniel will work in a rural paralegal office in Sierra Leone to promote access to justice services by serving individual clients and addressing community-level problems. The formal justice system in Sierra Leone is effectively inaccessible to large portions of the population, especially to those in the rural communities. As a result, most individuals in rural areas rely on customary law, comprised of ethnic customary norms, for dispute resolution. Daniel will assist the development of rule of law, promoting internalization of legal concepts within customary law, through training paralegals in formal concepts of the law, and overseeing mediation between disputing parties
Stephen Meyers
Ph.D. student, Department of Sociology, UC San Diego
Local and Global Meanings of the Right to Inclusive Education
Handicap International (Nicaragua)
In 2008, the United Nations ratified the Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. For the Disability Convention to make a real difference in the lives of persons with disabilities in developing countries, it is essential that grassroots associations engage their governments and raise awareness in their home communities. Stephen will be working at a Nicaraguan field office for Handicap International, a major disability and development NGO, to learn how local organizations are defining the right to inclusive education (article 24 of the Convention) and advocating that it be put into practice based on local history, experience, and identity.
Keramet Reiter
Ph.D. student, Jurisprudence and Social Policy program, School of Law, UC Berkeley
Parole, Snitch or Die: How Former Supermax Prisoners Experience Parole in California
National Council on Crime & Delinquency (Oakland, CA)
Supermax prisons, which detain prisoners indefinitely in solitary confinement, in conditions explicitly streamlined to create a sterile form of isolation, represent a novel form of extreme punishment, which pushes the boundaries of national and international dividing lines between decency and cruelty. And yet, the scholarship analyzing this phenomenon is minimal and inconclusive. In an effort to expand on this minimal scholarship, in collaboration with the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, Keramet hopes to document who is released from supermaxes in the state of California, and what they experience when they are released directly from solitary confinement, as they re-adjust to life outside of prison
Read this story on her research in the UC Berkeley NewsCenter and her commentary in Bioethics. Her book 23/7: Pelican Bay Prison and the Rise of Long-Term Solitary Confinement is due out October 2016.
Henry Steinberg
J.D. student (1L), UC Hastings College of the Law
The Right to a Healthy Environment: Marine Biodiversity and Freshwater Protection
Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense (Costa Rica)
Henry will work with the Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense (AIDA) in Costa Rica to increase access to safe freshwater resources and preserve marine biodiversity. To protect the right to a healthy environment, Henry will research relevant environmental law issues and develop regulatory and policy guidebooks for Latin American communities, NGOs and governments.
Rochelle Terman
Ph.D. student, Department of Political Science, UC Berkeley
Challenging Violence against Women in the Name of Culture, Religion, and Tradition
Women Living Under Muslim Laws (London, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Senegal, and Sudan)
As part of the Global Campaign to Stop Stoning and Killing Women, Rochelle will examine and document successful strategies by local women’s movements in seven focal countries (Afghanistan, Indonesia, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Senegal and Sudan) that challenge and negotiate the use of ‘culture’ to justify discrimination and violence against women and girls. Rochelle will collect the data on success stories from partner organizations in the focal countries and their contacts. She will also have the opportunity to conduct field research during two regional meetings.
Kate E. Trumbull
M.A. student, Social Documentation program, UC Santa Cruz
Somali Refugee Women, Poetry and the Border
Center for Bridging Communities (San Diego, CA)
Kate will produce a documentary exploring the role of poetry in the lives of Somali refugee women who have resettled to the San Diego/Tijuana border region. The film will examine the profound effects of civil war, forced migration, and gendered violence on these women’s lives and the tradition of political and cultural resistance and representation through poetic recitation. Working with Yasmin Hamud, Somali writer, community activist, and Executive Director of Center for Bridging Communities, an organization dedicated to working with Somali refugee youth, the film will examine how these women have transformed challenges into opportunities and worked to carve out a space for themselves and their families in San Diego in the post-9/11 era.
Elica Vafaie
J.D. student, School of Law, UC Davis
International Human Rights & Guantánamo Project
Center for Constitutional Rights (New York)
This project will involve work with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) on their International Human Rights and Guantánamo docket on various legal issues on active cases. Activities range from efforts to hold corporations accountable for their international wrong-doings domestically, through Alien Torts litigation and work to ban the use of private military contractors, and efforts to close the Guantánamo detention center. The project also entails work with the Education and Outreach Department on their ‘Ban the Use of Private Military Contractor’ and ‘Guantánamo Global Justice’ initiative campaigns, assisting in the production of educational- and fact-based materials.
Anonymous
The Crude Urban Revolution: Oil, Evictions and the Right to the City in Luanda, Angola
SOS Habitat (Angola)
The capital of oil-rich Angola is a city of profound and growing contradictions. Undergoing enormous transformations, contemporary Luanda stands between the promise of petro-development and the dire consequences of its materialization. While some benefit greatly from increased oil-backed investments, many see their houses being “pushed down.” The fellow will work with housing rights organization SOS Habitat in addressing the repercussions and possibilities of this crude urban revolution.
