Daily Brief Audio Series
A fellow human rights defender said to me some time back, “You don’t just need conviction to work in human rights; you need to be super-human, as well.”
They were lamenting the many sides of the job they had to do: conducting research, writing reports, training, filling out expense forms, and presenting work to potential donors. But it was also just the absurd number of meetings they had to attend, internally with colleagues and externally with partner organizations.
I may agree about the number of meetings, but I don’t think you have to be super-human to work in human rights. In fact, I think that’s a rather dangerous notion.
People working in human rights push themselves hard, sometimes too hard. And whether out of guilt or inspiration or a sense of responsibility, some folks sometimes maybe act like they think they can be super-human.
Then they burn out.
Of course, we all recognize the dangers with field work, when people are face to face with mass atrocity crimes in particular. I’ve seen people come out of the field in shock at the horrors they witnessed or learned about from victims and survivors, and it’s eroded their faith in humanity.
There’s no real getting used it either, nor should there be. Even those who have experienced it before have difficulty processing it all. Some turn to the bottle or other self-destructive behaviors. Others, rightly realizing they’re not super-human, seek therapy, which sensible employers help provide.
At this point, too, we all know it’s not just those who have first-hand experiences on the ground who need support from time to time. Those who deal with the images and the issues even secondarily can suffer trauma and depression.
What we’ve seen – whether first-hand or second – drives us to help the victims and survivors, help make the suffering stop, help achieve justice for and with them. That’s all fine, of course, that’s the work. Even a bit of obsession is no bad thing. Those of us who’ve been around the block a few times understand it’ll never be a 9-to-5 job.
But a little more 9-to-5 thinking doesn’t hurt.
I don’t exactly work 9-to-5 – maybe more like 7-to-7 – but when I’m off, I’m off. In the evenings and at the weekends, I avoid work-related screens and turn my phone to “do not disturb.” I try not to watch any TV that’s “too much like the day job.” The books I read are almost always about things far removed from today’s human rights issues.
I also take my holidays, and when I do, I shut off completely: no email, no social media, no work calls. I even refuse to look at the news.
I have an old friend who’s appalled at this. “How can you just abandon everything like that?”, he asks. “You have a responsibility, especially with all your Twitter followers… You’re an influencer, you should be using that platform every minute you can to help people.”
After first reminding him of my relative insignificance – I mean, seriously, do people still think the number of Twitter followers someone has is important? – I explain to him how, even if I do have some limited reach, it doesn’t do anyone any good if I work 24/7 and end up in a hospital.
I know my limits, and I encourage colleagues to accept theirs, too.
I insist on my staff taking their vacations. I’m pretty sure I’ve never said no to a holiday request, and certainly never to an “I need a few days off” after some particularly stressful time. I’ve never seen any of my bosses do so either.
If someone on my team contacts me about something work-related outside of office hours, I remind them not to. I tell them to stop working, to down tools, to turn off and enjoy life.
Human rights work may be perceived as a kind of calling, and yes, there’s a reason we more often call it a “movement” than a “sector.” But I think, in the past, there may have been a certain messianic attitude attached to it that’s dreadfully unhelpful for those of us working in it.
We’re not here to save the world, only to try to improve what we can. And it’s not all on one person’s shoulders. We work as a team. You take time off. I take time off.
I’m lucky to work with a set of managers who understand all this. Most of us who’ve been at this a while have, at one time or another and most likely on multiple occasions, seen what happens when a colleague pushes themselves too far.
You may or may not think human rights work is a “calling,” but in any case, it is a job. It’s not your whole life.
It was an appalling orgy of hate-driven violence: screaming young men against defenseless families and children. And it’s part of a disturbing global trend.
On December 27, rampaging students smashed through police lines and stormed a makeshift refugee shelter in a parking garage in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. More than 100 rioters then set upon some 137 Rohingya refugees, mostly women and children temporarily placed there.
After verbally and physically assaulting the refugees, they forced them onto trucks, sending them to the government immigration office, where the students demanded they be deported. The video of the assault and transport is a testimony to hate.
It’s not an isolated case, either. Elsewhere in the Indonesian province of Aceh, residents have tried to prevent boats carrying Rohingya refugees from reaching the shore. They’ve also surrounded the tents of Rohingya on beaches and other temporary locations, demanding they be relocated.
The rage that drives these ugly attacks has been whipped up in coordinated online campaigns. Rabble rousers spread lies on social media about the refugees to fuel public anger against them.
And it’s not limited to Indonesia: In the past year, we’ve seen orchestrated mob violence targeting refugees and migrants in numerous countries.
In the UK, far-right and anti-immigrant groups have attacked hotels housing asylum seekers. Assaults on refugees and their accommodation are rising in Germany. There’s been anti-refugee and anti-immigrant violence in Cyprus, Greece, Ireland, South Africa, Tunisia, and many other countries.
No doubt, like the Indonesian case, many of these attacks were similarly heated to a boiling point on an online stovetop of lies and disinformation.
And in so many of these countries, politicians seeking to increase their power are further feeding the violence by trying to use refugees as scapegoats for society’s ills. It’s a useful distraction from their own fecklessness. Doing something productive for citizens takes a political effort; blaming powerless people takes hardly any energy at all.
In one news report from Indonesia, a Rohingya refugee named Romakto, who says she was tortured in Myanmar and her husband murdered by an armed gang in Bangladesh, speaks plainly.
“We are helpless. Our country, land, and home we’re taken from us. Then we came here to seek peace, as we have experienced nothing but pain all our lives.”
Whether it’s thugs in the street or politicians in suits, it’s hard to understand what makes someone want to attack such a person. It’s a rejection of empathy and compassion for desperate people in need.
Do We Really Need a Trillionaire?, Daily Brief January 15, 2024
Daily Brief, January 15, 2024
As the annual gathering of the extreme elite kicks off in Davos today, I’m reminded of an argument I often have with an old friend.
It always starts with some news item about the number of billionaires somewhere: “the US is doing great – look at the number of billionaires they have!” Or, “you can see China’s getting better by the increasing number of billionaires there.” Or, “Look at the number of billionaires in India now!”
The prospect of the world’s first trillionaire has him almost unbearably excited: “Who will it be?”
To these friendly provocations, I eventually crack and respond with something like: does humanity really need a trillionaire? In what way will the world be a better place when someone becomes the first trillionaire?
Then, I remind him that the number of super-rich people says nothing about the greatness of a country. Greatness, to me, has far more to do with the overall happiness of its population. Some say billionaires create wealth (and therefore happiness, in their eyes), but, practically by definition, it looks more like they’re hoarding it.
Vast riches have always sparked admiration among many folks like my friend, but they’ve also increased envy and resentment among others. A system perceived as unfairly benefitting a tiny few while the vast majority are essentially told to live on the scraps of what the rich leave behind doesn’t sound like a stable system to me. I don’t see any national benefit there.
What’s more, extreme inequality is a human rights issue. Among other things, it contributes to corruption and mismanagement of public resources, which further reduces access to the keys to a dignified life: affordable healthcare, quality education, adequate housing, a living wage, social protection, and safe drinking water.
Human Rights Watch research frequently exposes how people in poverty are often more vulnerable to having their rights violated. Extreme disparities in wealth mean extreme disparities in power, and thus a greater potential for human rights abuses, which, of course, tends to happen more to those without power than to those with it.
To coincide with the start of billionaires’ private jets arriving for the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Oxfam has published a new report on global inequality. It reads:
“Since 2020, the richest five men in the world have doubled their fortunes. During the same period, almost five billion people globally have become poorer. Hardship and hunger are a daily reality for many people worldwide. At current rates, it will take 230 years to end poverty, but we could have our first trillionaire in 10 years.”
That doesn’t sound like greatness to me.
Part-time Principles Are Not Principles at All, Daily Brief January 11, 2024
Daily Brief, January 11, 2024
Human Rights Watch’s World Report is being published today. It’s our annual look at the situations in some 100 countries around the globe and an overall assessment of where humanity stands in terms of our fundamental freedoms.
If you’re interested in any one particular country, I encourage you to go to the home page of the World Report, select that location, and dig deeper. In the new publication’s hundreds of pages, you’ll find rich material, packed with detail.
Here, however, I’d like to focus on the “big picture.” On Monday, I discussed in this newsletter, how doing this kind of thing – that is, seeking to describe global trends in a world of country-by-country particularities – is extremely difficult. Today, I want to explain why it’s also essential: in short, it’s because humanity needs to learn lessons and do better.
In our World Report, the big picture on human rights globally is described in a long, thoughtful essay by our executive director, Tirana Hassan. Of course, I hope you will read the whole thing, but let me highlight the core point here:
Global leaders are failing at the foundations.
Both the causes and consequences of all humanity’s major problems today – from the atrocities seen in numerous conflicts, to the climate crisis, to extreme economic inequality – ignore national borders and cannot be solved by governments acting alone.
Following the last truly global human catastrophe, WW2, world leaders realized they had to work together going forward. To do so, they created institutions like the UN. More importantly, they agreed on shared universal principles, upon which international cooperation should be based.
Promoting international human rights and the rule of law, they knew, would help address global problems. At the core of this multi-national, multi-cultural, and multi-faith effort 75 years ago was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the basis of all contemporary human rights conventions and treaties.
This unifying achievement of shared principles is the foundation of our modern world – yet global leaders today are too often ignoring it.
They don’t ignore it all time, of course. Political leaders will often refer to the Declaration or the shared sense of morality that stems from it. But far too often these days, they only do so when it suits their particular geopolitical aims.
Instead of sticking to principles consistently, global leaders give us situational ethics and double standards. Tirana lists numerous cases in her essay and in her opening comments at the World Report launch event:
For example, many of the governments that condemned Hamas’ war crimes have been muted in responding to those by the Israeli government.
Some governments around the world are vocal in condemning Israeli government war crimes against civilians in Gaza but silent about Chinese government crimes against humanity in Xinjiang.
Others demand international prosecution for Russian war crimes in Ukraine while undermining accountability for past US abuses in Afghanistan.
I’ve said it again and again: if you only care about human rights abuses and atrocities when your enemies commit them, then you don’t really care about human rights abuses and atrocities. You’re responding to horror with politics, not principles.
And it’s not simply a moral shame that leaders don’t uphold our core values consistently. It weakens the general belief in the universality of human rights and undermines trust in the legitimacy of the laws designed to protect them. This has devastating, even deadly, consequences.
As Tirana writes: “When governments pick and choose which obligations to enforce, they perpetuate injustice not only in the present but in the future for those whose rights have been sacrificed – and can embolden abusive governments to extend the reach of their repression.”
Too many world leaders today can (and do) essentially say, “why should my friends and I follow the rules, when you and your friends are not following the rules?” This attitude establishes and maintains so many of the horrors we are witnessing now. It also prepares space for even greater disasters to come.
With our leaders increasingly abandoning our universal principles, we all understand the lessons from history they are rejecting.
The people who came before us knew that the people who came before them had wrecked the world with their parochial passions and narrow nationalisms. They started to put in place international institutions and agreed rulebooks that would help humanity avoid making the same mistakes. Today, we are ignoring them at our peril, and countless people are paying a horrific price.
If we want a better world, if we want to avoid the horrors of the past, we must expect and demand our leaders reverse their trend toward part-time principles.
Genocide Case against Israel at World Court, Daily Brief January 10, 2024
Daily Brief, January 10, 2024.
Tomorrow will be an important day for the government of Israel and the people of Palestine, as well as for the history of international justice. The world’s highest court will begin hearings on accusations of genocide in Gaza.
It’s critical to realize what this case is – and what it is not – to understand where it might lead and what impacts it may have over the coming weeks, months, and years. Let me run through the basics, step by step.
On December 29, South Africa’s government filed a case with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) alleging that, by atrocities against the Palestinian people after October 7, Israel is violating the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The government of Israel has said it would be represented at the ICJ to oppose the allegations.
The ICJ is an independent court based in The Hague charged with settling international legal disputes between states. This is not the International Criminal Court (the ICC, also based in The Hague), which can deal with individual responsibility for atrocity crimes. The ICJ addresses issues that are one state against another, and this case seeks a legal determination of state responsibility for genocide.
The convention in question, often just called “the Genocide Convention,” is an international treaty that Israel, South Africa, and most other countries have agreed to. It defines genocide as acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.”
South Africa contends Israel has violated the Genocide Convention by committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, and by failing to prevent it. This, South Africa says, includes not holding senior Israeli officials and others accountable for their direct and public incitement to genocide.
The South African application to the ICJ says Israel is killing Palestinians in Gaza in large numbers, causing them serious bodily and mental harm, imposing measures intended to prevent Palestinian births, and inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of Palestinians as a group.
South Africa cites expulsions and mass displacement; deprivation of access to adequate food and water, medical care, shelter, clothes, hygiene, and sanitation; and the destruction of the fabric of Palestinian life in Gaza.
South Africa further contends the “acts of genocide” should be placed in “the broader context of Israel’s conduct towards Palestinians during its 75-year-long apartheid, its 56-year-long belligerent occupation of Palestinian territory and its 16-year-long blockade of Gaza.”
These are obviously huge, complex issues, so don’t expect a quick decision. This case – and the determination one way or the other regarding genocide – could take years to reach a final ruling.
However, South Africa has asked the court to order what are called “provisional measures” and “as a matter of extreme urgency” to protect the Palestinian people in Gaza from further harm and ensure Israel’s compliance with the Genocide Convention. South Africa says Palestinians in Gaza are in “urgent and severe need of the Court’s protection.”
It’s this immediate request for provisional measures that will be the subject of the hearings on January 11 and 12.
The specific provisional measures South Africa is seeking include an immediate suspension of Israel’s military operations in Gaza and measures to prevent the destruction and ensure the preservation of evidence related to the ICJ case. This would include giving access to Gaza for fact-finding missions, international mandates, and other bodies.
South Africa also asked the court to require Israel to report to it on steps taken to carry out any provisional measures order within a week of its issuance and then at regular intervals until the court issues its final ruling. In its oral arguments tomorrow, South Africa could specifically ask the ICJ to make Israel’s reports public.
The ICJ’s decision on this urgent request for provisional measures could come relatively quickly – maybe in a week or a month.
However, governments don’t have to wait even that long. Right now, Palestinians in Gaza are facing catastrophic living conditions as a result of war crimes carried out by Israeli authorities. Leaders around the world can, and should, act immediately.
As my colleague and expert Balkees Jarrah asks: “How many more alarm bells have to ring and how many more civilians must unlawfully suffer or be killed before governments take action?”