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The Advocacy Project (AP) recruits students to help marginalized communities tell their story and claim their rights.

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First Month Update

Sarah Wang | PostedJuly 1st, 2011 | Uncategorized

Tags: ADAPP, Association for the Defence of Azerbaijani Political Prisoners, Iran, Minorities

I’ve been working with the Advocacy Project and its host the Association for the Defence of Azerbaijani Political Prisoners (ADAPP) for over a month now and so far there has been quite a lot of progress.

The Azerbaijani situation in Iran is very complicated: on the one hand, Azerbaijanis are not allowed to be educated in their own language and any usage of their mother tongue is punished by fees and social ostracization, yet, if the Azerbaijanis assimilate into the Persian society, they are free to move up the ranks socially and politically. I was quite shocked to find out that the 2009 opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi and even the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei are both of Azerbaijani origins. Being such a large and sometimes prominent minority group, it is a shame that Azerbaijanis’ struggles in Iran are ignored domestically and unknown globally.

In the past month we finished some written proposals for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (Geneva) as well as an annual report for the board meeting. Having met mostly everyone involved here at ADAPP, I’m confident that in the next months we will be able to make more progress and to bring ADAPP’s work in the last five years to light. I will be their third summer intern and I’m really excited to continue this tradition of hard work, dedication, and research to help assist this minority group.

In the past two weeks, we decided that we want to make a short documentary style video to introduce the organization. We agreed that because this will be the video that represents our entire work, we need this to be shot as professionally as possible. This was perfect because Vancouver is known to be the third biggest film industry in the world and many people were interested to help our organization out for little, if not no, compensation. We are currently getting the script together, finalizing our crew, and hopefully in the next week, filming.

The Republic of Azerbaijan

Tags: ADAPP, Association for the Defence of Azerbaijani Political Prisoners, Iran, Minorities

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Fellow: Sarah Wang

Association for Defense of Azerbaijani Political Prisoners in Iran

• Sarah’s Biography

  
  Sarah Wang was born in Beijing, China and has not lived in a city for more than 4 to 5 years. She was raised “on the move” from Beijing to Ottawa to the Bay Area to Vancouver and now she has finally settled down for her undergraduate education in Toronto. She has just completed her first year at the University of Toronto intending to complete her honours Bachelor of Arts in International Relations and Philosophy.

  Since high school, Sarah has been interested in human rights and international development work. A collaborative project she worked on with Lawyers’ Rights Watch Canada was published by the United Nations when she was 16. In the summer of 2010, she was lucky enough to receive hands-on experience working with minorities when she taught English to Tibetans and Mongolians during her summer vacation in Beijing. And now at the University of Toronto, she is a writer for the Global Health Education section of the University of Toronto International Health Program.

  She is very fortunate to be given an opportunity this summer to work with Advocacy Project and its host in Vancouver, Association for the Defence of Azerbaijani Political Prisoners (ADAPP). This summer she will be focusing on how to improve the living conditions and increase social, linguistic, political, and legal rights of the Azerbaijani minority in Iran. The Azerbaijani population in Iran constitutes the country’s largest minority group, yet Azerbaijanis are prohibited from learning their mother tongue and achieving higher socio-political standing without unjust socio-cultural assimilation. Sarah hopes to assist ADAPP in increasing its visibility and policy decision-making influence in a national and international level.

  As Sarah anticipates the years of education left, she is excited for a future in foreign service. As for now, she is looking forward to an unforgettable summer broadening her research interests, learning the basics of human rights work, and hopefully making an impact advocating for marginalized communities.
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  Sarah's Flickr Photos