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Reflecting on life as a Human Rights Lawyer
Reflecting on life as a Human Rights Lawyer
I am standing in the middle of Gracanica, a Serb enclave in Kosovo, amidst bombed out homes pockmarked from afar by Albanian snipers. It is 2004 and as a Minority Rights Officer with the United Nations, I am here to celebrate a wine harvest with the local community. I speak to members of the Serb community who tell me about their lives here with no electricity, restricted freedom of movement and UN escorts to and from their place of work. This is one of my most enduring memories in my career as an international human rights lawyer and was a formative moment in my own career journey.
I knew from my early days as a law student that a career in human rights was where my heart lay. The shiny corporate world of the suited and booted was not for me. I knew the ‘what’ but had to figure out the ‘how’. I decided to study law and graduated with a master’s degree in Human Rights and Civil Liberties before qualifying as a solicitor. I hoped that as a lawyer, I could be a ‘change-maker’.
I cut my teeth as an immigration and asylum lawyer working for six and a half years for a large national charity, the Immigration Advisory Service (IAS). The charity represents asylum seekers and migrants before the immigration courts in London. It was the best training I could have had and gave me a strong set of skills which we need as human rights lawyers. The key skills are forensic analysis, advocacy, negotiation, empathy, legal drafting, and working with marginalised groups. It was deeply affecting work. I still think about many of my cases to this day. My time at the IAS was also hugely formative in developing my thematic expertise - working on behalf of people deprived of liberty, prisoners’ rights, prison reform and dignity behind bars. This forms the backbone of my consultancy practice today.
‘London is home, but the world is my workplace’.
My international practice as a human rights lawyer has taken me around the world to many countries, including Bangladesh, Russia, Ukraine, Japan, Armenia, Georgia, Ethiopia and Canada to name but a few. I like to say that ‘London is home but the world is my workplace’. I have been privileged to work in many sectors of the human rights world including international organisations (the Council of Europe, the UN), the non-governmental sector (Amnesty International, Penal Reform International), the British Government (Human Rights Advisor to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and academia (as a Visiting Professor of Human Rights)
I have developed my ‘tool box’ of skills. As human rights professionals, we are technicians in terms of skills and subject matter expertise in each and every role. I am now an independent human rights consultant with a diverse and varied client base. I call myself a ‘lawyer-plus’ as I am a lawyer plus a trainer, researcher, sometime speechwriter, academic and career coach! I love the fact that no two days are the same in my consultancy practice - it keeps me on my toes.
There have been highs and lows in my career as you might expect working in such a challenging sector. I continue to replay some of my most difficult and challenging cases in my head. As a Human Rights Advisor in the consular section at the FCDO, I successfully lobbied the Japanese prison authorities to provide an elderly British woman suffering from early dementia with appropriate medical treatment and access to Japanese classes. However I also think about the dual British/Algerian national in Algeria who was imprisoned on political grounds and died on hunger strike under my watch as Human Rights Advisor. Was there more I should or could have done to save his life? Or the trafficking survivor who was sent back to Albania following a failed asylum appeal before our immigration courts. This work lingers in my mind.
This work is not for everyone. It takes stamina, both emotional and physical, to sustain a career in the human rights field. We bear witness to harrowing testimonies that we would rather not hear of including torture, sexual violence and other gross violations of human rights. But, as human rights professionals, we owe it to survivors to report, document and ultimately hold those responsible to account. We amplify the cracked and broken voices and offer to narrate for them. Self-care, burn out and secondary trauma are real risks for those of us working in the human rights sector. We need to take care of ourselves if we want to do our job well.
What would I say to anyone looking to pursue a career in the human rights sector? I firmly believe there is a place for everyone in the human rights world, but it may take time, resilience, and a healthy degree of tenacity to get there. And please don’t think that the human rights sector is solely the domain of lawyers. It is not. Our sector welcomes professionals from other disciplines all of whom bring a rich and varied skills set, subject matter expertise and networks which are so vitally important to the work that we do.
‘Was there more I should or could have done to save his life?’
I would strongly encourage aspiring human rights professionals to start writing about human rights topics, building a publication portfolio at the earliest opportunity and growing thought leadership in this area. This can be achieved easily through writing blogs, self-publishing on LinkedIn or through alumni publications (university law journals and so on). Of course, networking and building one’s own ‘human rights family’ is critical. I’m a strong advocate of conducting ‘informational interviews’ with human rights professionals to learn more about their own career journey and their day-today role. These conversations can open many doors and opportunities.
This work has not broken me. Would I, or could I do another line of work. I think deeply about this when I feel overwhelmed or mentally exhausted but the answer has to be a resounding ‘no’. The desire to help those who really need support is too big for me to ignore it. I remain optimistic that we can, and do, make a difference to those we help. Should I look after myself more? Probably. I am learning day by day. ■
Vicki Prais
Independent Human Rights Consultant, academic, human rights lawyer.
