A Voice For the Voiceless

MISSION

The Advocacy Project seeks to produce social change by helping marginalized communities to become advocates for social justice and claim their rights

From the Field, August 10, 2004

Summer Interns and AP Director Report from Partners Abroad

The Advocacy Project's summer interns, graduate students from Georgetown and Tufts Universities, are reporting on-line about their work with partners abroad in Afghanistan, Bosnia, the Czech Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Italy, the Palestinian territories and Sri Lanka. AP Director Iain Guest is also traveling and working with partners this summer, and issuing his own reports.

Excerpts of some of the most recent blogs follow, and will be sent weekly. Read an overview of all 2004 projects.

Sarah Schores (Georgetown University) is working with the Afghan Women's Network (AWN) a network of NGOs committed to women's rights in Afghanistan.

"Today I went to the Mera Kachowi Refugee Camp near Peshawar. I wanted to interview a few of the women who had taken AWN's voter registration educational sessions, see what their impressions of the sessions had been and what their opinion of the upcoming election was, and take some pictures...

Shukria, a woman who works for AWN acting as my translator, and I pulled up to the camp and walked into a small courtyard where we were greeted by a few women who bade us to sit down. We were about to start interviewing Zarbabo, a confident and friendly young woman who had taken the AWN election training sessions, when a crowd of about 50 women and children began to crowd around us...The women began to get excited and were pushing and shouting at us. I later learned that many of them thought I was at the camp to actually register them. The shouting and pushing got louder and more urgent to the point where I was afraid we were going to be crushed to death by the mob."


Michael Keller (Georgetown University) is working with the Home for Human Rights (HHR), a human rights organization in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

"At a restaurant near the impressive rock fortress of Sigiriya - Sri Lanka's most famous (and most outrageously high-priced) tourist attraction - I met a couple touring the country...The couple commented on how nice they felt the police officers were. If only they knew the truth, I told them.

As an outsider here, it's incredibly easy to completely overlook the dark side of paradise...This is not just because some areas of the country are off-limits, or because tourism infrastructure is lacking in the Tamil areas. It is because the supposed "ethnic" conflict in Sri Lanka does not extend far beyond the political world...Everyone agrees: no more politicians, no more problems.

The unfortunate side of this deceptive calm is that foreigners - and not just tourists - are led to believe that Sri Lanka is doing relatively well... Even if that were justified (and it's not), the peace has by no means been won. Talk of a looming outbreak of war is on even high-ranking officials' lips, while the so-called "peace talks" have been stalled for over a year and the so-called "cease-fire" is violated with every grisly assassination..."

Melinda Willis (Tufts University) is working with TAMPEP, the Turin, Italy branch of the Transnational AIDS Prevention Among Migrant Prostitutes in Europe Project.

"In Italy, the month of August is dedicated to vacations. On the news last week, the headline actually read "Italy is closed for the holiday" as footage of traffic jams stretching for miles (or kilometers) was shown.

Given the fact that life outside the office has slowed considerably, it seems fitting that today is my last day with TAMPEP...These past few days have seen me trying to leave an easily detectable trail of my work for others to find should they need it, and making a few last minute additions to the website.

Almost every day for the last 10 weeks I sat at this desk, working on this computer. In the process, I certainly got to know a lot about the individual projects TAMPEP has launched in the past and are planning for the future. It is hard not to gain that insight when you take the time to read and collect information."