A Voice For the Voiceless

MISSION

The Advocacy Project seeks to help community-based advocates produce, disseminate and use information, and so become more effective advocates for human rights and social justice

Eun Ha Kim and Refugee Law Project (RLP)

Eun Ha Kim is currently pursuing her Juris Doctor at Georgetown University Law Center, where she plans to focus on international human rights. Prior to law school, she received her BA with a dual concentration in Economics and Urban Studies from Brown University. Upon feeling personally unfulfilled after completing a two-year analyst program in investment banking, she conducted independent travels around the world to places including Cambodia and Nepal for a year. Inspired by the adversity and strength of the people she has met, she was compelled to return to school to impact developing systems with the rule of law.

During her involvement in The Advocacy Project’s 2005 Summer Internship Program, Eun Ha KiM assisted the Refugee Law Project (RLP) in Kampala, Uganda.

The RLP strives to protect and promote fundamental human rights of refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs) and asylum seekers within Uganda using national and international law. The three part strategy implemented by the organization can be divided in to three main focal areas: research and advocacy, legal aid and counseling, and education and training. Recent conflicts in Uganda and surrounding nations has resulted in nearly 200,000 officially registered international refugees living inside the country and 1.4 million IDPs.


Eun Ha shortly after interviewing a border official near the Ugandan border with the Congo.

Eun Ha endeavored to squeeze as much as possible out of her experience in Uganda and requested a large workload from the RLP at the outset. Her enthusiasm was rewarded, and she was afforded many opportunities to unleash her energies. Among her numerous activities, Eun Ha drafted a critique for a proposed refugee bill given to parliamentarians, organized training sessions for local police, community service leaders, and international service providers, wrote and edited grant proposals, and produced a situation analysis to raise awareness and drive policy.

She also conducted interviews with refugees and did fieldwork in border towns for the research phase of the policy-formation efforts of the RLP. As Eun Ha noted, the living conditions in the refugee camps are squalid and dangerous. Confined to the camps, refugees lose their freedom of movement, they live in cramped spaces, they have limited access to food, healthcare, and education, and frequently women and children are defenseless targets of sexual violence.

While in Uganda, Eun Ha wrote periodic reports online in the form of blogs. Her blog reflects Eun Ha’s fierce independence and consummate thoughtfulness, offering anecdotes about her participation in local cultural events and side trips to Kenya and Rwanda, in addition to serious observations about legal obstacles confronting the RLP and Uganda as a whole.

• Eun Ha Kim's blog