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March 08th, 2020

8/3/2020

 
Why Women’s Economic Empowerment Matters
by Geena Whitman Research Assistant 
Centre for Business, Society and Global Challenges
Oxford Brookes University
“Human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights, once and for all.” Hilary Clinton

The world is not on track to achieve gender equality by 2030; one of the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) outlined by the United Nations in 2015. Based on current trends, it would take 257 years to close the gender gap in economic opportunity, despite the fact that women’s equal participation in the economy would add $28 trillion to the global economy (approximately 26% of global GDP). The movement towards women’s empowerment isn’t about strengthening women, women are already strong;  they raise households, lead communities and influence change whilst still being restricted a seat at the table. Women’s empowerment is about changing the way the world perceives, and values that strength, alongside ensuring women are afforded the same opportunities and privileges that men are. Investing in women’s empowerment, more specifically, their economic empowerment, sets the world on a direct path towards gender equality, healthier households, poverty eradication and truly inclusive economic growth. Whilst economic empowerment specifically relates to a person’s ability to work to create wealth, it indirectly links in with family planning, access to schooling, and the financial inclusion and political representation of women, all factors which contribute and enable women to break the barriers barring their seat at the table.

Family Planning
Family planning, the ability to control and plan your fertility, represents an immense extension of human freedom, allowing women to decide freely the amount of children they want, when they want them and how they want them. Growing rates of contraceptive methods has resulted not only in improvements in health-related outcomes such as reduced maternal and infant mortality rates, but also improvements in educational and economic outcomes, particularly for girls and women. Currently, more than one in ten married or ‘in-union’ women worldwide have an unmet need for family planning (i.e. they want to stop/delay childbearing but are unable to access the correct contraception); with this being as many as one in five women in Africa. Access to family planning not only ensures women can prevent an unwanted pregnancy, it also allows couples to have smaller families and to space the gap between children more efficiently, ensuring they are less vulnerable to extreme poverty, children are healthier and better educated, and women are able to re-enter the labour market if desired. Availability of family planning also has important incentive effects, by increasing parent’s investments into girls not yet fertile, such as daughters and granddaughters, including investment in their health, education and general well-being. The more access we have to family planning, the more opportunities we are given outside of potential motherhood. 

Girls Schooling
Educated women have a better chance of escaping poverty, leading healthier and more productive lives, and raising the living standards for their children, families and communities. Children born to literate mothers are less likely to die before the age of five than to illiterate mothers. They are more active in the formal labour market, have less children, marry at a later age, and engage more actively in civic spaces. However, less than 40% of all countries provide girls and boys with equal access to education, twice as many girls as boys will never even enter the school playground, and over two thirds of the 774 million illiterate people in the world are female. Keeping women in school keeps them away from early marriage, with girls who have completed seven years of education marrying on average, five years later than their uneducated peers. It’s no secret that the more educated a person, the higher salary they can command, with every extra year of education estimated to increase a women’s earning power by 10-20%. Educating women from a young age, keeping them in school for as long as possible and allowing them to access all breadths of academia (from social sciences to STEM) creates a society in which women are active citizens, engaged in innovation and at the forefront of decision-making processes. 

Women in Work
Throughout the world, women and girls bear most of the burden of unpaid household and care-work, are more vulnerable to insecure employment and receive lower pay for the same work as men, as well as a systemic under-valuing of feminised jobs (such as caring, teaching and nursing). In the 50 countries across the world where women are more educated than men, they still earn 39% less than their male equivalent counterparts. In the UK, PWC estimates a 16.4% gender pay gap, with women disproportionately more represented in part-time precarious employment and working outside the labour market (such as in unpaid labour). UN Women estimates that 57 million people (majority being women) supply full-time, unpaid work (such as caring for elderly relatives) that fills the gaps caused by weak healthcare provision globally, in which the total net contribution of this work to the global economy is $10 trillion per year. Comparatively, the global automotive industry contributes $4 trillion to the global economy annually. Investing in ‘feminised labour’, and reversing the under-investment in social services such as nursing and childcare allows more women to present in the labour market, earn a decent living and be valued for the work they provide. It also encourages more men to enter this field of work, diversifying the labour market and moving towards gender neutrality in these sectors. Opening up access to typically male dominated fields to women provides a diversity of perspective in innovations in these areas, and provides women with equal access to the same opportunities as men are provided. 

Financing Women
When household income is controlled by women, either through their own earning or cash transfers, a greater proportion is spent on the health, education and well-being of children. At a macro level, financial inclusion for women has a significant impact on the overall economic growth and community development, due to the productivity gains from human capital investment. Despite this, women are disproportionately more likely to be ‘unbanked’ than their male counterparts, with only 65% of women globally having access to a bank account in comparison to 72% of men (with an even larger gap being found in regions such as Southeast Asia and the Middle East). This means that women have less security around their income, are less likely to be able to accumulate savings, and have a reduced access to loans to either fund their household, or start-up their own business. Globally, women are less likely to receive capital investment than men, due to societal assumptions around women’s ability to manage money, and business. By increasing access to finance for women, by the provision of bank accounts and removing social stigmas around lending to women, you don’t just increase the amount of women starting up their own businesses, you also increase the investment going to the next generation, investments in their health, education and well-being. This investment in the future generation leads to significant productivity gains for the country on a macroeconomic level. 

Political Power
Despite women making up over half the global population, we make up less female heads of government than we did five years. Amongst the 193 countries worldwide, only 10 of these countries are headed by a women; New Zealand, Namibia, Bangladesh, Nepal, Estonia, Croatia, Norway, Ethiopia, Taiwan, Lithuania. Interestingly, the rate of women’s representation has increased significantly in the past two decades, rising from 11.8% representation in national parliament in 1998 to 23.5% in 2018. This still does not mean the 30 percent benchmark, often the level of representation required to achieve a ‘critical mass’. Furthermore, a recent UN Women study found that almost 50% of people globally believe that men make better political leaders – a social judgement that places an invisible barrier, and an affront to fairness and a real meritocracy. Globally, we have a real problem with women taking the lead, both in business and in parliament. The full and equitable participation of women in politics is essential to building and sustaining strong, diverse and vibrant democracies. Women’s participation results in huge gains in gender equal policies, greater responsiveness to citizen’s needs (as women tend to be more involved with the local and wider community), and increased investment in the social sectors – sectors that are globally underfunded and undervalued. This provides the global economy with a more sustainable future, ensures we have healthier and happier citizens, and means that women and men are represented equally at all levels of public and private life.

Normalising women in education, in business and in positions of power and decision-making in the public sphere helps reduce these unconscious biases and stigmas that are held in private. Women’s economic empowerment is one of the most essential tools we have to ensure sustainable and inclusive economic development and growth across the world. Investing in the power of women, in every aspect and every step of their life, means a healthier, happier and more equitable society for all.

February 26th, 2020

26/2/2020

 
'It began with an interview with a woman called Rashida'.
Through the eyes of a documentary maker and photographer

The Journey Rohingya women by Shafiur Rahman
NB: Shafiur's work will be exhibited in The Glass Tank during the Festival


I had no intention to document the Rohingya crisis. It all happened unexpectedly - without plans and without finance!  I was in Cox’s Bazar in December of 2016 on a project unrelated to the Rohingya. I happened to be there on the 16th of December a national holiday in Bangladesh. The day is a remembrance of when, forty five years earlier, the painful liberation war of 1971 had ended. A genocide had unfolded the previous 9 months and finally the nightmare had come to an end for the Bangladeshis.  Today, that day is known as “Victory Day”. I had nothing to do on that particular day, and so I decided to take a drive to see “what the fuss was about” with the Rohingya pouring in from Myanmar.

​What I saw and what I heard deeply unsettled me.

Though I was born in Bangladesh,  I live in Europe. I am familiar with the haunting  TV news imagery of Syrian and other refugees, walking hundreds of miles, with their children in tow, along bleak roads and across  borders of barbed-wire. I had been to The Jungle in Calais. I had myself filmed desperate refugees in Libyan prisons, and in Italian and Maltese detention camps. And yet in December of 2016, in the cold of Bangladesh’s winter, I was completely unprepared for what I saw and I was overwhelmed.

Naturally, as a documentary maker, I wanted to bear witness. The next month, in January 2017,  I travelled to the camps again. And I have done so over two dozen times in the last 36 months! The January trip was even more shattering and transformative.

It began with an interview with a woman called Rashida. We were outside her hut of plastic sheeting and bamboo poles. It was a painful interview and in it she described the slaughter of her 12 year old daughter.  She recounted how the body of the dead child had to be retrieved secretly at night and then buried quietly. Her eye was still black where one soldier had hit her. She looked distraught. Inside her hut, I met adolescent and young women who had all survived massacres and had been raped. They spoke to me on camera and they insisted they would speak without the veil.

From this group of women, I started to document the lives of  six of them over a period of six months. And indeed I have remained connected with them over the last three years. During this time, all manner of personal disasters unfolded for these young women. One was trafficked. One was raped. One got married to an abusive husband.  What was clear was that Bangladesh was a refuge only in name. For young refugee women, the camps are unsafe. I vividly remember the moment I asked some of them what they would like me to buy for them as a little token of thanks. I couldn’t believe the answer. They wanted a burqa. Without the burqa even going to the toilet was difficult for them.

I was beginning to despair about finding anything redemptive in my entire experience. I was beginning to think that these women will never get over the deaths of their loved ones and/or their own personal trauma. There was no therapy for them. No family support - because they were all dead.  Nothing. Yet over time they showed a resilience and energy that surprised me. For the mothers in the group, I could see that the endurance and the will to survive perhaps came from their love for their children. For the unmarried young women, I can only conjecture that it came from healing together and helped in some small way by a  sewing collective which promoted togetherness and gave them some hope.

Testimony Tailors
When people started to learn about their suffering, they wanted to help. A sewing machine was purchased and delivered to one of the women and then another, and then several more. In time 80 women had sewing machines and they taught each other how to use them and started to make some clothes.
Their sewing provided income which gained them some amount of control over their lives. One young woman who was under pressure to marry someone not of her choosing was able to say no because she had become the breadwinner of the family.

Now something truly inspirational for anyone to witness is how these women are finding hope through creating clothes together. That these women could ever smile again after what they have lived through is difficult to believe but see for yourself.
web site: www.srdocs.net
Instagram: www.instagram.com/shafiur
Twitter: www.twitter.com/shafiur
Testimony Tailors: testimonytailors.com
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February 19th, 2020

19/2/2020

 
In Conversation with a Youth Resilience Builder by Geena Whiteman 

The Oxford Human Rights Festival is about celebrating culture, encouraging debates and discussions and highlighting the work of activists, organisations and individuals across the world in building resilience. The OxHRF has been fortunate enough to conduct interviews with young pioneers across the world, heading up their own organisations and initiatives to make positive change, boost resilience and achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Over the next few days we will be posting stories of young activists, the work that they do and what resilience means to them. If you want to check out the work that their organisations do, we have attached their websites for your further information.

Name: Michael Afolami
Age: 27
Location: Nigeria
Organization: Peace Actor Network
www.peaceactornet.org


What challenges is your organization aiming to combat, and is this a local, national or international initiative?

We are working to create an atmosphere of lasting peace in communities, where human potential can flourish. Our work at Peace Actor Network is based on the idea that humans and their actions and activities produce resultant effects in their immediate environments. Our organization is aiming to fix attitudes that fan the embers of conflict. Recently, our organization had gathered that a community that was in a ceasefire with its warring neighboring community might resuscitate the buried disagreement. As our usual practice, we identified the kingpin of the threatening party and interviewed him. Through the interview, we established a relationship with him and built his trust in us, such that he confided in us what their intentions were, and we were able to stop the looming catastrophe. To us, what we do is making communities less fragile and strong enough to prevent the outbreak of conflict. At the national and international levels, the peculiarity and somewhat objective common characteristic of fragile states is that they are prone to conflict. This is exactly the challenge we are aiming to solve: making communities less prone to conflict. At the moment, we only have a local reach with strong vision to enlarge our network of peacebuilders throughout the nation and even beyond in a time not too long.

What does resilience mean to you, and how does your organization build the resilience of those you work with?

At our organization, we perceive conflict as the greatest threat to humanity, and that is what we are fighting against. We do not necessarily need to wait for it before we act. Instead, we take preemptive measures to stop conflict in all dimensions while also building capacity of the people to deal with it – I mean, minimize its scope and impacts – in the event that it occurs. This is what resilience means to us. In light of this, we are leveraging peace education, capacity building and community development to create a community of people that are conscious enough to shun attitudes that lead to conflict.

Which of the 17 SDGs do you think is most important for building resilience around the world, and why?
Peace, justice and strong institution. First thing to note is that a peaceful atmosphere is a prerequisite for building resilience that is sustainable. This implies that you cannot build resilience in conflict, and this is the truth: that resilience is the capacity of a people to avert conflict, violence and disaster, and their ability to manage one in its eventuality. Rather than entirely viewing peace in this regard as the absence of violence, it is important to look at peace in its positive state. Here, peace is assumed to be shaped by attitudes, institutions and structures. These attitudes, institutions and structures are embedded in a number of goals that describe, among others, the level of a community’s resilience. For instance, the political culture of a state; its levels of corruption and human capital; equity in health, education and other infrastructure; flow of information; and the acceptance of the right of others, all determine whether a state is prone to conflict, or whether it can handle one when it occurs. Justice would mean the respect for the rule of law, human rights and dignity, and these are the major drivers of resilience of a people. Judicial independence, balanced democracy, are some institutions and systems that reinforce justice. Effective governance is necessary to increase the levels of human capital, enhance free flow of information and enforce less corrupt systems across governance, media, and lifestyle. In a nutshell, building resilience depends on the people's level of right, positive attitude, and availability of strong institutions in countries and communities. 
www.peaceactornet.org


February 15th, 2020

15/2/2020

 

People & Planet guest blog
'How can you uphold the human rights of others whilst studying?'

This blog has been written by People and Planet based at The Old Music Hall, 106-108 Cowley Rd, Cowley, Oxford OX4 1JE.  The views and suggestions in this blog are the authors.

It’s a big question, one that may not have crossed your mind before – but if you’re a student at a UK university then you are uniquely placed to influence the lives of others around the world. Enter People & Planet, the UK’s largest student network campaigning on world poverty and the environment. Our campaigns are specifically tailored to the university setting, maximising the impact that students can have by encouraging them to leverage their position of privilege within the higher education sector. Our demands are achievable, have a long term impact, are built on the principle of solidarity, and are democratically chosen by our student network.

People & Planet run four campaigns on campuses in the UK, two of which are focussed on climate justice, and the other two focussed on workers rights and migrant rights. Whilst all our campaigns are intrinsically linked, this Blog will focus on the two campaigns most directly working towards protecting Human Rights in the UK and further afield.

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Sweatshop Free
Sweatshop Free is our campaign focused on challenging corporate power: previously this focused on the garment industry but recently moved to incorporate electronics factories into it’s remit, after it became obvious that UK universities were complicit in the use of sweatshops to produce their tech products. The UK Modern Slavery Act (2015) seeks to address slavery, forced labour and human trafficking taking place today. On 29 October 2015, the transparency in supply chains provisions of the Act (section 54) came into force. The provisions require commercial and public interest organisations, including universities, to publish a statement setting out steps the organisation has taken to ensure that slavery and human trafficking is not taking place in any of its supply chains and in any part of its own business, often referred to as an “anti-slavery statement”.

According to the International Labour Organization around 25 million men, women and children around the world are in a form of forced labour. Globally, there are 5.4 victims of modern slavery for every 1,000 people, and 1 in 4 victims of modern slavery are children. In recent years, there have been a number of troubling revelations relating to labour and human rights abuses within electronics factories, such as the Foxconn Suicides and Samsung union-busting. The global electronics industry has been identified as a high-risk industry for modern slavery.

So what are universities and colleges doing to tackle this issue? As huge purchasers of electronics, spending over £10 billion on products every year, the potential for our educational institutions to influence the electronics sector for the better is clear to see. Much of this money goes to companies with long records of human rights abuses. In terms of the electronics industry, each university generally spends between £3 million and £12 million on computers and other hardware every year.

In 2013, a coalition of workers’ rights organisations in countries producing electronics and European purchasers launched Electronics Watch. This became the first worker led organisation supporting demands for democratic unions, better pay and improved factory conditions in the electronics industry. When colleges, universities and other public institutions come together and join Electronics Watch, they can start making important requests from market leaders, including Apple, HP, Dell, Samsung and others.
They can ask where factories in their supply chains are (transparency is a crucial first step to finding out about working conditions!); what policies the companies have to protect workers; what reparations they offer when they find abuses have occurred; and for workers to participate in factory monitoring and problem-solving. Electronics Watch directly supports worker led monitoring and accountability through informal workers groups, civil society organisations and independent trade unions where workers in sweatshops are based, from Mexico to South Korea and from the Philippines to China.
​

The primary goal of the Sweatshop Free campaign is to get our universities and colleges to join Electronics Watch and take their responsibility as major purchasers of electronics seriously!
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Undoing Borders
People & Planets Undoing Borders campaign is part of a student movement fighting the advance of the 'hostile environment' onto university campuses. The climate crisis, alongside decades of military intervention in the Global South, has driven tens of millions from their homes. Meanwhile, the border industry, including immigration detention centres and surveillance companies, swells with the profits of this devastation.
The Home Office co-opts universities into doing their dirty work of surveilling migrants, and undercutting their rights and access to public goods. Young people with temporary immigration status and en-route to citizenship face insurmountable barriers to access higher education. Those with irregular status are denied access entirely. Migrant students and workers in the university are subjected to increasingly invasive forms of policing. While targeting migrants, these processes also erode the rights and freedoms essential to citizenship itself.
Students can reclaim universities as a site of struggle for migrant justice: People, not documents and detention centres, must have power to determine who is free to live with dignity and transform society. We are part of the long fight for these rights to be universal. To this end, we are campaigning for the Vice-Chancellors of UK universities to sign the 'Pledge Against the Hostile Environment'.
The Pledge is a public condemnation of Home Office policies that set up discriminatory barriers to entry for migrant students, turn university staff into border guards and expose students and staff to the abuses of detention and deportation. It is a commitment to prioritising the University's role as a site of critical learning and research, and its orientation to social good, over compliance with Home Office anti-immigrant policy. The Pledge has three main areas:
1. Education for all
​Applicants with ‘discretionary’ or ‘limited’ leave to remain are made to pay international fees and denied access to student finance – effectively excluding them from higher education. Some universities impose more stringent academic requirements and financial proof for students from countries that UK Visas and Immigration designates as 'high-risk'.

We are demanding that universities classify applicants with temporary immigration status as ‘home’ students for fee purposes, and to provide them with bursaries and administrative support. We are demanding that universities remove any additional academic and financial requirements for international applicants put in place to minimise visa rejection figures.
2. Stop surveillance
The Home Office co-opts teaching staff to monitor their own students’ compliance with visa requirements, to ‘catch out’ those whose status becomes irregular or who have to work without permission to support themselves. Universities develop teams of dedicated personnel, as well as training programmes to embed this surveillance across all departments.

We are demanding that universities remove all measures of monitoring that infringe on legislation protecting human rights, civil liberties and equality and to end sub-contracting of data-collection to private companies. We are demanding that training gives priority to these duties over compliance with the Home Office.
3. No detention, no deportation
Universities should offer refuge from the abuses of the detention-deportation system and ensure the freedom of association of its workers. They have previously cut off ties to students who are trapped in detention, even when their cases are ongoing. Sub-contracted corporations that manage their catering, cleaning or security services have invited immigration enforcement raids on university workers in order to crush labour organising.

We are demanding that universities take every precaution in order not to deliver students and staff into immigration detention, to support those who are detained or under threat of detention or deportation, and to intervene to ensure staff’s freedom of association.
Want to get involved with People and Planet? So, if you want to uphold the human rights of others during your time at university, one way of doing so is to launch a Sweatshop Free or Undoing Borders campaign on your campus.

Contact sweatshopfree@peopleandplanet.org and/or undoingborders@peopleandplanet.org to find out more, we have everything needed to get you started and will support you all the way!


Hauwa from the Oxford Human Rights Festival planning committee shares ...

6/2/2020

 
​
What is your name?
My name is Hauwa, I am studying my Masters in Emergency and Development Practice at CENDEP Brookes.  I am part of the Oxford Human Right planning committee for 2020.

Where are you from?
I am from Nigeria.

Why are you interested in this festival?
For the first time in my life I have the opportunity to be involved in a platform that talks about human peace, human rights and draws experiences from all over the world showing how people are coping. It helps bring to light human rights issues, abuses and concerns that we should all be aware of and then think about what we can do.

Why do you think it is important now?
We are currently very aware and in a place in history where people are aware that human rights violations occur.  They are also aware they have rights and others have rights.  Also, the big movement of social media makes it so easy for you to get you voice and pictures out there, reaching across the oceans to get sympathy or solidarity.

What does resilience mean to you?
Resilience to me means not just the ability to bounce back but when I think of resilience I think it’s the ability of people to stretch… to bend and to twist but never beyond their tensile strength in such a case… no matter how hard something is it never really breaks them. They accommodate it and then they go back to where they were before and perhaps in instances they go back better.

What are you most excited about in the festival?
I am excited about the exhibition where we will see stories of resilience from all corners of the world.  I am excited about all the talks and the panel discussion we’ll be having and am excited about the impact and reach we will be able to have from the festival.

Can you tell me a little bit about Nigeria’s involvement?
We are having in the exhibition showcasing Fati Abubakar, a brilliant photographer from Nigeria who documents stories of resilience among internally displaced people in Nigeria.  There has been an ongoing conflict for over 10 years and she goes there… she picks up her camera and she captures the resilience of the people showing that even though they have been displaced from their homes they are still smiling and hoping to go back home.   Their hope keeps them alive. 

Exhibition and events link here
Picture below of Hauwa
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Three Practical Ways to Help Refugees Build Resilience by Geena Whiteman (OxHRF Planning Committee)

16/1/2020

 
When a million refugees arrived on the shores of Europe in 2016, we all stopped and finally realised the scale of a problem that had been steadily growing before our eyes. In 2006, 38 million people has been displaced from their home due to conflict or persecution, and in 2016, that number sat at over 65 million – equivalent to the population of the UK. A lack of unified response and a subsequent growth in populist parties has exacerbated the problem, with people either welcoming or shunning the incoming persons. Whilst many people are pushing for values of tolerance and openness, many others are full of fear, afraid of the arrival of many people from different cultures, faiths and continents. Despite this, there are many people asking what they can do to help, one tiny person in a sea of humans, in their everyday life. Whilst it’s not plausible for everybody to potter down to Calais to help at the camps, or head over to Lesbos to hand out clothing and food, there are organisations and projects you can support at home that help build the resilience and improve the livelihoods of many refugees across the world.
 
Learn a Language
One of the most common New Year’s Resolutions (besides losing weight, saving money and travelling more) is to learn a new skill, such as a new language. We all want to increase our employability, our cultural capital and impress our friends with the skills we accumulate, and in a more globalised world, languages are one of the most impressive skills to make you stand out from the crowd. Whilst we know of all the common language learning courses such as Duolingo and Rosetta Stone, how about one with a human touch? Programs such as Chatterbox and NaTakallam connect you with an expert refugee coach who can deliver tailored language learning, from common languages such as French, Spanish and Arabic, to more localised languages such as Bengali, Somali, Persian and Swahili.
 
Thoughtful Tourism
Each year, more and more Brits make the choice to travel more, book more flights and see more cities. There has been a growth in organisations concentrating specifically on involving refugees and displaced persons in their supply chain, to both aid in the integration of refugees in society and create opportunities for refugees to showcase their experiences and culture. Locally in Oxford, the Pitts River Museum has launched the Multaka-Oxford project, which creates volunteer opportunities for refugees to work in the museum and host multi-lingual events, tours, blogs and displays. If you’re headed to Brazil, Migraflix is a growing organisation that supports activities for refugees to teach and share their culture through cooking classes, music, dance, art, cultural fairs and themed evenings. Or if you’re heading somewhere closer to home, such as Berlin or Copenhagen, you can explore the city through the eyes and voices of refugees in the city with Refugee Voices Tours.
 
Hiring Refugee Talent
If you’re in the fortunate position to be seeking new talent for your company or organisation, why not tap into the huge talent and skills that refugees can provide? Finding employment is not only essential for building economic resilience for refugees, but it also helps improve language skills, increases cultural awareness and builds local and social networks. Platforms such as Seek or Transitions London are a great way to find hidden talent, whilst also being socially responsible. Many refugees, even after being granted the right to work are struggling to find employment in the UK due to unconscious bias, lack of access to opportunities or information or inability to provide documentation of qualifications despite being highly skilled.

Art as a form of resilience: The Sketch Club (Quetta, Pakistan) by PhD candidate Fatima Hashmi

22/12/2019

 
When it comes to how populations face adverse circumstances, they have different capacities. Some resist better than others. This ability to face adversity and emerge strengthened is what we call resilience today, which is underpinned by human agency, focusing on the actions of individuals and communities.

In turbulent environments like that of my hometown Quetta, part of my PhD research aim was to investigate how the Hazara community responds to the different forms of stigmatisation, residing in two areas of Hazara Town and Marriabad. These two areas are in fact cordoned off by security check posts, walls and boundaries, a measure introduced by the Government for the ‘safety’ of the Hazara community.
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Picture: A View of Marribad

During my fieldwork, most of the young participants mentioned how the ‘Sketch Club’ had been their saviour when the conditions in Quetta were turbulent to such an extent that the targeted killings of the Hazara community were either one or two in a day or in a week or in a month. The impact was so severe that one participant describes the moment of peace as:

‘We would be waiting and wondering how come this week there was no one killed. We used to wait. If you were to ask any Hazara what is the moment of peace in our lives, they would say that the period between the two incidents of target killings is a moment of peace for us’. 

I was intrigued to find out more about the Sketch Club, which I quickly discovered is run by my primary and secondary school art teacher, Sir Fazil. 

Background of the Sketch Club
Syed Fazil Hussain, most commonly known in Quetta as Fazil Mousavi or Sir Fazil amongst his current and former students, founded the informal setup of the Sketch Club in 2009. The purpose of the club was to give back to the society by transferring his skills and knowledge to the youth of the Hazara community, which he most beautifully expressed through the verse of Sahir Ludhianvi:

‘duniyā ne tajrabāt o havādis kī shakl meñ
jo kuchh mujhe diyā hai vo lauTā rahā huuñ main’
[What the world, in the form of experiences and accidents bestowed upon me, I am returning]
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Picture: Sir Fazil on a typical Friday session

However, the vision of such an institution did not come without hurdles. It took many years to find the perfect space where students are inspired by the stunning views of the mountains on the roof top of a building. This is where they paint in broad daylight.

Currently, there are around 20 students enrolled and the classes run from Monday to Friday between the hours of 14:00 and 16:30. Fridays are dedicated to theory sessions through which the students learn how to critique different paintings, build their confidence and also indulge in literature such as Krishan Chander (dubbed as the storyteller of the oppressed), Ghulam Abbas (a famous writer in classical literature of the sub-continent), Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi (known as Pakistan's Renaissance Man). Moving away from fiction, the students also read essays of Ashfaq Ahmed (award winning writer from Pakistan in the field of literature and broadcasting). However, Fazil Mousavi is very mindful of the students’ background, cultural values and social norms. Keeping in mind all the elements, he only chooses the fictions that the students are able to comprehend. Through such teaching techniques, Fazil Mousavi notes that ‘the students are also members of the society and in my class, they get the opportunity to speak and they speak openly, with freedom’.

Almost all of the professional colleges in Pakistan are aware of this informal setup in Quetta because the former students of the Sketch Club who end up in the professional colleges across Pakistan have an edge compared to the other students because of their confidence and the ability to critique. 
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Currently, there are 14 artists (painters, designers, architects) working professionally, who have studied at the Sketch Club and 40 students are under education in professional colleges. This year alone, 16 students of the Sketch Club entered professional colleges, a figure more than from all over Balochistan Province. A few of the former students of the Sketch Club are internationally renowned artists.

The Sketch Club has received a lot of attention through their international exhibitions in Sydney, Melbourne and Los Angeles. The reason behind gaining this attention was in fact when the staff and students were preparing for an exhibition at Musa College in Quetta and a few days before the event there was a targeted killing where four Hazara community members were forced out of a bus and brutally killed (the most recent attack was on April 12, 2019). What the Sketch Club did in response highlights the resilience of the community towards the atrocities and persecutions. They did not let fear stop them from showcasing the exhibition. Instead, the reaction was such that it helped raise the diminished morale of the community and the turnout was spectacular. The Sketch Club’s pen has indeed proven to be mightier than a sword, as Sir Fazil notes that:

My students have the power and the ability to convert their feelings and emotions onto the canvas. The best option we have is to begin the process of catharsis within ourselves and the best way for catharsis is to paint, to do poetry, write essays, fictions and novels. This allows for the process of catharsis to continue, the work we do also becomes part of our history and we get to release the pain and suffering we are feeling. This is the best form of resilience

This formed the basis for inviting Sir Fazil to participate in the upcoming Oxford Human Rights Festival 2020, celebrating its 18th successive year with a focus on RESILIENCE. 

The AIM is to raise awareness of human rights issues through the arts, including informative films, performances, talks, workshops, and exhibitions.

FOUNDED in 2003 the Festival, was initiated by Brookes University postgraduate students on the MA in Development and Emergency Practice (DEP), which is supported by the Centre for Development and Emergency Practice (CENDEP) within the School of Architecture.

The 2020 Glass Tank exhibition
The Festival’s exhibition will be in The Glass Tank at Brookes University, Headington Campus from 14t March to 3 April and will have art and craft representing resilience from across the globe. One of the exhibits will include the work of Sir Fazil and his students from the Sketch Club.

Some of the past exhibitions and media coverage of the Sketch Club can be found here: Between the Lines, Confronting Rising Religious Intolerance in Pakistan, Hazara children: Still life, Herald Exclusive: A dash of colour
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FUNDING
On behalf of OxHRF, I am fundraising for Sir Fazil’s travel, accommodation and other necessary requirements for the exhibition. We also welcome sponsorships and collaborations. You can make a donation here: http://gf.me/u/w453rj
Please share this link with your family, friends and extended network.

Technology, Resilience and Human Rights by Geena Whiteman (OxHRF Planning Committee)

17/12/2019

 
Technology touches almost every aspect of our daily lives. We can share our selfies and holiday pictures at the touch of a button, we can send and receive money without stepping foot in a bank and we can even have an entire meal and night-out without once leaving our table or interacting with another human being (thank you Wetherspoons app). In less rudimental terms, it has also expanded our access to opportunities – we can work from home, access healthcare and study for qualifications all from the small computers in our pockets. Technology is helping us become more resilient, more empowered and providing a world of opportunities at our fingertips. 

Digital technology is a powerful tool for human rights, achieving transitional justice by enabling activists to organise and spread awareness to a wider audience, reconstructing economies  through providing a new medium for work and improving access to life-saving and changing resources at the click of a button. It has the power to address and rebalance many societal challenges by tackling some of the world’s toughest environmental, social and political problems, and increasing resilience in local communities. However, rapid developments in AI, robotics and automation pose serious concerns about who will benefit and lose from the expansion of such technologies, and how they can impose on our human rights and the future of work. The mass collection of data can violate our right to privacy, the growing flexibility in the nature of work can negatively affect the livelihood of many and the growth in machinery in production can result in soaring inequality, downward pressure on wages and mass unemployment. 

Despite this, the rise in #TechForGood and #SocialTech is undeniable, so here are three innovative ways that technology is improving resilience and maximising access to our human rights.

Digital Identity, Refugee Integration and Financial Inclusion
The World Bank predicts that there are over one billion people around the world unable to provide identification that proves who they are. Under the circumstances in which they are forced to flee their homes, refugees and asylum seekers are less likely to possess any form of identification from their country of origin. In situations of disaster, conflict and political turmoil, documents can be forgotten, lost, destroyed or stolen along the refugee route, and those who are fleeing due to the persecution often travel without documentation for their own safety. The ability to prove your identity is a core part in travelling across international borders, registering with authorities and humanitarian organisations, accessing healthcare and other services and connecting to the internet. The concept of digital identification has become such an important topic in the conversation on human rights, partially driven by the 2015 commitment of all countries under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to “provide a legal identity for all, including birth registration,''  by 2030 (SDG16.9).

Advances in digital technology and the introduction of biometric ID systems by governments are resulting in new methods of providing identification to forcibly displaced persons. Biometric ID allows a person to be identified and authenticated based upon a set of recognizable and verifiable data that is unique to them, such as retina scans, facial recognition or fingerprints. In the Kenyan refugee camp Dadaab, Blockchain platform BanQu is aiding displaced Somalis access financial products and other services by creating new ‘economic identities’. [1]  BanQu enables individuals to upload photographs, details about their key characteristics and biometrics to a secure ledge as proof of their identity, and builds on this information by linking it with life events, financial transactions, government records and other important assets. It also allows users to connect with family members and friends to further aid in the verification of a person’s ID, assisting in the validation of this information and creating a secure and verified digital identity.

Looking to the future, the provision of digital ID that is officially recognised can facilitate the financial and economic inclusion of refugees, by enabling them to register SIM cards, open mobile money or bank accounts and access employment and education opportunities. Financial inclusion has the capacity to aid vulnerable groups, such as displaced persons, become more resilient to environmental and economic shocks. However, the collection and use of such personal data must be done in a way that protects from misuse or unauthorized disclosure, and ensures a person’s right to privacy is respected. The UNHCR recognizes that this is even more important for refugees, who are often escaping political turmoil and more vulnerable, which requires more considerations and a strong legal and regulatory framework
Social Media, Activism and Accountability
Whilst social media is one of the most important tools in any millennial or Gen Z’s toolkit, it also plays a vital role in elevating the voices of activists to call out human rights violations, hold governments accountable and achieve transitional justice. Across the world, governments recognise the growing power of social media, and often take extreme steps to restrict this, such as the Chinese government’s ban on popular social media sites and the subsequent development of state-monitored sites such as WeChat. It becomes one of the first methods of attack during times of upheaval, with social media blocks becoming more frequently implemented in protests, such as the January 2019 social media ban in Zimbabwe, the June ban in Sudan and the September ban in Egypt. 

A prime example of the use of social media in holding higher powers accountable is the growth of the #MeToo campaign across the world. What was started by Tarana Burke on Myspace in 2006 ended up exposing wide-spread sexual-abuse allegations against senior Hollywood directors such as Harvey Weinstein. The hashtag ended up trending in at least 85 countries, prolifically in India, Pakistan and the UK, but more widely across South America, Africa and the Middle East. The ability to reach a wide audience in second, to speak out from the safety of your bedroom and the anonymity to join a movement of people campaigning for the same cause has created a spurt in social media activism and activists. Further to this, social media shrinks the information asymmetry between citizens and state, allowing global audiences to see first-hand footage that would otherwise be unreachable to them, and holding governments and individuals accountable for their behaviours. A recent example of social media as an accountability mechanism are the videos shared during the ongoing Hong Kong protests, showing authorities using excessive forces on protestors. These videos began circulating on Facebook, which resulted in global media attention that has condemned authorities’ action and called for an end to the violence. 

The role of social media in achieving transitional justice has also grown in recent years, with increasing access to information of human rights abuses spurring NGOs and other non-profits to connect human rights abuse survivors to services that can aid them in their recovery and their fight for justice. It was social media that connected Khadija Siddiqi, a survivor of patriarchal violence in Pakistan, to human rights activist and lawyer Hassin Niazi, who got her attacker sentence to seven years imprisonment for attempted murder and launched a viral campaign to #FightLikeKhadija. Social media gave Khadija the resilience to pursue justice, the opportunity to find similar-minded people, and to open a dialogue about patriarchal violence. However, social media and the anonymity it brings also provides anonymous spaces that cultivate and reward toxic behaviour, seen with the increase of trolling, the growth in online communities dedicated to extreme groups (such as ‘incels’). The Muslim Rohingya community are a prime example of how social media can increase hate. For example we have seen the spread of hatred and discriminating comments across Facebook against the Rohingya community contributing to them fleeing Myanmar. 

Satellites, Injustice and Disaster Response
Earth observation, and the use of satellites, plays a significant role in achieving most of the SDGs and achieving almost a quarter of all the targets. The use of satellite technology in humanitarian work has been historically underutilized until recent years, with a growing use in disaster response, relief and resilience building across the world. Natural disasters have impacted 3.5 billion people, costing approximately $1.9 trillion in economic losses since 2000, and have the potential to push nearly 100 million people into extreme poverty by 2030. Emerging and developing economies are disproportionately impacted by natural disasters, as people often live in high risk locations such as urban slums and flood zones due to the lower cost and proximity to work. Small island nations, such as Fiji, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, are some of the most at risk countries, with their populations a few metres above sea level and rural communities struggling to access the satellite data. To combat this, an international initiative called CommonSensing is addressing this challenge, providing technical solutions and developing the in-country capacity to use these geospatial tools to build resilience, and better secure funding to mitigate climate change risks.  

Whilst satellites are an excellent tool for disaster response, in the past decade their use has expanded to exposing human rights abuse and injustices across the world, giving an access-all-area pass to parts of the world with limited access or safety restrictions. Amnesty International used satellite technology to investigate an alleged attack by Boko Haram in 2015 in two North Eastern Nigerian villages, and managed to determine the destruction of 3,700 structures and support witness testimonies. Human rights organisations are now building committed teams trained in satellite technology to monitor global conflict and injustice, becoming a vital part of key human rights organisations research. However, due to the newness of the use of such technology, and often, images do not exist, either due to cloudy climates or inadequate provision of technology in certain regions of the world. This is slowly starting to change, with smaller companies starting to send microsatellites into space, moving towards having regular imaging of the earth to aid in improving resilience and increasing accountability for human rights injustice.

Technology advancements and the growth of the #TechForGood movement have the capacity to change the lives and boost the resilience of billions of individuals, families and communities for the better. Creating a framework of what #TechForGood really means, increasing the funding available for humanitarian tech and promoting public-private partnerships are essential in moving #TechForGood forward.

If you want to learn more about how tech can be used in human rights, or have your own ideas, why not sign up to our Human Rights Business Lab contest? 

Contact: Geena Whiteman at gwhiteman@brookes.ac.uk

[1] 
GSMA (2017). Refugees and Identity: Considerations for Mobile-Enabled Registration and Aid Delivery. GSMA M4D Working Paper


About the author
​

My name is Geena Whiteman, and I am a research assistant here at Oxford Brookes University in the Centre for Business, Society and Global Challenges. Most of my work has been in the Balkans, and my research focuses on post-conflict reconstruction and development, particularly how young people are rebuilding their futures under economic transition. My interest in human rights stems from my academic background in development economics, and fascination with the way private sector interventions can either alleviate or accentuate human rights abuses, dependent upon the motivations of the business.
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Miriam Slaymaker: a Q&A about the Festival

12/2/2018

 
Why you are interested in the festival? I am interested in the festival since it allows me, as part of the committee, to emphasize the relationship and correlation between the citizens and the power a government has over them.  Overuse and misuse of well-meant powers granted or given to a government by itself can result in the reduction or inhibition of the Rights of all Humans affected by it.
What Human Rights/Identity means to you? Human rights and personal identity is incredibly important. One's right to a personal identity begins with the right to life. We know that it is only through existing that one can cultivate their personal identity. Identity is a part of your right to how you differentiate and are differentiated from other individuals with their own identities among the masses of humanity.
What it has to do with DEP? This festival is intertwined with my master's course 'Development and Emergency Practice', in particular this year's theme because it is about identity - what we have learnt is that forced migrants,internally displaced people, environmental migrants and trafficked people can be left in a liminal phase. A liminal phase can not only affect an individual's attitude and perception of their own identity but also the host nation's perception of them.
My favourite bits: I have enjoyed being behind the scenes, seeing how committee members communicate and work together to produce such a powerful week full of information, performances and speakers.
What it is like behind the scenes? Behind the scenes, preparing for this event, was a lot of work of various kinds - not physically stressing, but mentally.  For me, it was continual phone calls and a lot of leg work; many, many, rejections, or just being ignored and not responded to while trying to contact someone.  While supporting, promoting, and trying to source funding for this festival, in the midst of pursuing my degree, it was difficult to find time for a semblance of a personal life. But I know that it is for a worthy cause and that I would regret not being a part of it more so than anything else.

Vlad Stoilkov: autism and human rights

23/11/2017

 
As I was enjoying a cigarette break from by business essay last fall I was forwarded an email from the National Autistic Society. It was about their annual Autism Uncut film festival which had just opened for submissions. For some reason I immediately felt inspired so I sat down and scribbled a rough idea for a short film and went upstairs to go on with my assignment. Of course, it got difficult for me to focus on homework so I started digging into the autism topic on the Internet.
Back then I thought most people, myself included had a decent understanding of what autism is. But even a quick Google search reveals how broad the autism spectrum is and I was pretty much overwhelmed. So I spent the rest of the day refining the script until I had something both thought-provoking and easy to film during the very little free time I had before the submission deadline.
Now, I won’t dive into the details but you can see my two and a half minute film above. If you want to find more information about autism or if you want to help, then please click on the link in the video’s description which will take you to The National Autistic Society’s page. Even though the short film didn’t the attention I was hoping for the fact that I did it made me feel like I was helping. I recently took the opportunity to get involved in the 2018 Oxford Human Rights Festival which I think is a way of contributing to various issues on a larger scale
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